Did the Nazis murder Austria’s Greatest Sportsman?
May 18, 2010 by Matt Horner
Matthias Sindelar
Matthias Sindelar was one of the greatest footballers of his generation. Tall, blond, and athletic, Sindelar could have been a creation of Goebbels’ master race propaganda machine. However, the Austrian’s mysterious death, at the age of just 35, left many people questioning whether the player nicknamed ‘the Paper Man’ had been the victim of a Gestapo assassination.
Sindelar—skilful and elegant—was the captain and brightest star of Austria’s Wunderteam of the 1930s. During this period, Austria were one of the best teams in international football, with Sindelar their leading scorer. The Wunderteam confirmed their place amongst world football’s elite with a narrow and controversial semi-final defeat to eventual winners and hosts Italy in the 1934 World Cup.
Sindelar’s performances in Italy caught the eye of Europe’s top club sides. Manchester United offered big money to FK Austria Wien for their star player but the move interested neither the Vienna-based club nor Sindelar. ‘The Paper Man’ was at the peak of his career and had helped his club side to three successive national championships. Sixty years before the onset of Brand Beckham, Austria experienced Brand Sindelar; billboards and magazines frequently featured Austria’s favourite footballer promoting menswear, watches and dairy products. The striker even appeared in a feature film; playing himself in Roxy and the Wunderteam.
1938 promised to be another year of success for Sindelar; the Austrian national team were fancied to do well in that summer’s World Cup in France, and although he would be thirty-five by the time the tournament kicked-off, Sindelar was playing as well as ever. The team were in a rich vein of form, a victory over France and a draw with world champions Italy allaying any fears that the Wunderteam were in decline, but Sindelar’s dream of World Cup glory was shattered by the actions of a fellow Austrian—Adolf Hitler.
On 12th March 1938, German tanks rumbled across the Austrian border and the state of Austria ceased to exist instead becoming the German province of Ostmark. It was a long awaited triumph for Hitler, who had stated his desire to unite Austria and Germany in the opening chapter of Mein Kampf.
For once the German troops received a warm welcome from their hosts. American journalist William L. Shirer, based in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss, reported that the majority of Austrians sincerely believed that a union between Austria and Germany was in their best interest, even if that Germany was a Nazi Germany. Not all Austrians welcomed the new regime, and among the dissenters was Matthias Sindelar.
Sindelar’s life changed quickly and dramatically under Nazi rule. The Austrian professional football association was disbanded and all Jewish players and club administrators were barred. FK Austria Wien were hit hard by the new directives; half of Sindelar’s teammates were Jews, as were the majority of the club’s officials. The Anschluss also signalled the end of the Austrian national side, with a new unified team lined up to represent the two countries in the upcoming World Cup. Sindelar refused to fall in line with the new regime—publicly declaring that he would not play for the unified team, and continuing to socialise with his friends in Vienna’s large Jewish community.
Sindelar’s most defiant act was witnessed by 60,000 spectators at the Nazi organised reunification match. The match pitted an ‘old Austria’ team against the new unified German/Austrian team, and was intended by the authorities to be a public display of successful alliance. The Nazis hoped that the ‘old Austria’ team would succumb to the combined might of the best players from the consolidated international sides. Displaying an unusual naivety, the Nazi rulers invited Sindelar to captain the ‘old Austria’ team. ‘The Paper Man’ accepted the offer on condition that his team would wear a red and white kit to reflect the colours of the Austrian flag, and would play under the name Austria rather than Ostmark.
Before the game, Sindelar and his teammates were warned that it would be inadvisable for them to score, and during the first half it seemed that they were heeding the warning. Chance after chance was missed, and some reporters suggested that Sindelar and his comrades were intentionally shooting off-target. Midway through the second half, Sindelar decided that it was time to give the Austrian supporters something to cheer. Reacting quickly to a rebound, the ‘old Austria’ captain smashed the ball into the goal to put his side one-nil up. Following his captain’s lead, Schasti Sesta soon made it two-nil with a goal scored directly from a long-range free-kick. Sindelar could not hide his delight and celebrated by joyously dancing in front of Nazi officials seated in the directors’ box. The game finished with an embarrassing two-nil defeat for the unified team. Sindelar’s man of the match performance proved to be his last for his country. Within ten months he was dead.
Following the reunification game, Sindelar turned his back on football. He rejected further overtures from the manager of the unified team, and instead chose to try his hand at running a Viennese cafe. This venture led to Sindelar arousing further suspicions from the local Gestapo. The cafe’s previous Jewish owner was forced to sell the business under new Nazi laws. In most cases, the new owners would pay a knockdown price to buy a business from a Jew, but Sindelar, at his own request, paid full market value for the cafe. The Gestapo noted that Sindelar both refused to put up Nazi posters in the cafe, and continued to serve all the cafe’s customers—including Jews.
Matthias Sindelar’s dead body was discovered on 23 January 1939. A friend, concerned that Sindelar’s business had remained closed for a few days, found the former footballer dead in the apartment above the cafe. Lying on the bed alongside Sindelar was his girlfriend, Camilla Castagnola, who barely alive when discovered, did not regain consciousness and died in hospital the following day.
After an enquiry lasting just two days, the police announced that the couple’s death was the result of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty heater. Few believed the official story. On the same day that the police concluded their investigations, a national newspaper claimed that “everything points towards this great man having become the victim of murder through poisoning.” Numerous conspiracy theories were offered; one implicated Ms Castagnola, a former prostitute and Sindelar’s girlfriend for just ten days, and another suggested that the couple had agreed a suicide pact with Sindelar feeling disregarded by the new regime. One theory offered that Sindelar was in fact the victim of a gangland hit, ordered as a result of the star’s refusal to pay a massive gambling debt.
The most repeated accusation was that Sindelar was murdered by the Gestapo. He was well known to the Nazi secret police, and his open insubordination of the regime, in day to day life and on the football pitch, made him an embarrassment if not a direct threat to the government. Would this have been enough for him to feature on a Gestapo hit list? There is no conclusive evidence but these were sadistic days in Vienna. The Austrian national archive say that the Viennese police records from this period have been destroyed, whilst some historians say they have seen the records but are still no nearer to solving the mystery. Other anecdotal evidence suggests that a local official was bribed to change the record of Sindelar’s death to “accident” so that he would be afforded a state funeral.
Over 20,000 mourners lined the streets of Vienna on the day of Sindelar’s funeral, to pay their final respects to a local hero and Austria’s first international football superstar. The exact cause of his death, at the age of just 35, remains a mystery.