Mein Vater, der HSV und die Nazis - Fussball unter Faschisten

After his father's death, Torkel Wächter finds letters, photographs and documents from Nazi Germany in a box. They introduce him to a Walter he had not known: as a young man, his father played football for Hamburger SV before antisemitic persecution upended his life. Mein Vater, der HSV und die Nazis – Fussball unter Faschisten, a documentary directed by Katrin Hafemann and Marie Teresa Lasserre, begins with this family discovery and follows the questions it raises about the history of German football.

Torkel's search moves through different places and materials. Photographs of teams from the 1920s evoke Walter's sporting world; family letters and archives help trace what happened when membership of a club did not protect him from exclusion. The film returns to Hamburg and places personal testimony alongside HSV's present-day work of remembrance. The stadium, the museum and the other places visited are more than backdrops: they show where a private history meets that of a sporting institution.

The documentary also approaches the relationship between football and National Socialism through the lives of players linked to HSV. Careers that began on the same pitch took profoundly different paths under the dictatorship. Football appears in team photographs, club archives and testimony about persecution: a collective practice that belongs to social history, including its most difficult chapters. The son's inquiry remains the thread of the story as he tries to understand who his father was before exile.

Produced for NDR and also presented at Berlin's 11mm Football Film Festival in 2025, the film has been submitted to the International Sport Film Festival 2026. This presentation concerns the documentary and its context; it does not anticipate a selection or a screening in the Festival programme.