Insightful obituary on Wolfgang Paul: why a watchmaker became a BVB icon | OneFootball

At the age of 86, honorary captain, European Cup winner, and former BVB captain Wolfgang Paul passed away last week. In Spiegel, Peter Ahrens dedicates a worthwhile obituary to Paul, known as “the stopper,” which also sheds light on lesser-known aspects of his life.

The fact that Wolfgang Paul was the captain of the BVB side that became the first German team to win a European trophy in 1966 will hardly have gone unmentioned in the news of his passing. But why Wolfgang Paul held such a special place in Dortmund and among Borussia fans was mentioned less often in those reports.

Peter Ahrens highlights this aspect in his obituary of Wolfgang Paul, which also reveals several other facets of Paul’s life that help explain why he was such a remarkable figure for Borussia Dortmund.

To begin with, apart from the early stage of his career at VfL Schwerte, Wolfgang Paul played only for BVB before having to retire in 1970 at just 30 years old due to injury problems. But Wolfgang Paul was also active for the Black and Yellows during a period Ahrens calls the Ruhr region’s “golden years.” Hard as it may be for many to imagine today, the Ruhr area was a thriving region in the 1960s, where people enjoyed their newly gained prosperity.

Photo by Christof Koepsel/Getty Images for DFB

Held and Paul like Müller and Beckenbauer

Borussia Dortmund’s successes—German champions in 1963, cup winners in 1965, and finally European Cup winners in 1966—thus came at a time when people in the Ruhr already felt they were at the forefront of life. Parallels between BVB and FC Bayern can also be found in the fact that both clubs were initially rather insignificant before a decade full of success brought them to the top of German football.

At Bayern, in the 1970s, it was the players around the brilliant duo of Müller and Beckenbauer. At BVB, in the 1960s, it was those players around Wolfgang Paul who established the myth of BVB as a club successful both nationally and internationally. Besides Paul himself, Siggi Held, Lothar Emmerich, and Stan Libuda should also be mentioned.

Ahrens writes that Paul was someone who “always led from the front” and never bent before authority. A certain stubbornness probably helped, a trait often attributed to people from the Sauerland like Wolfgang Paul. Yet he remained just as loyal to his actual profession as he did to BVB, whose council of elders he chaired for many years. Paul was a trained watchmaker, a trade he actively pursued in his hometown of Bigge-Olsberg until shortly before his death.

For more fascinating details from his career, readers can explore the Spiegel obituary themselves.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.