Shown at Berlin's International Football Film Festival, "Pelé aus Neubrandenburg" highlights the little-known connection between the GDR and Africa. Its director told DW what's inspiring about Chérif Souleymane's story.
Image: NDR
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In the film Pelé aus Neubrandenburg, the name Pelé doesn't refer to the Brazilian football star, but to Chérif Souleymane (also known as Souleymane Chérif), a Guinean athlete who started a successful football career in the East German town of Neubrandenburg while doing a two-year socialist student exchange in the 1960s.
The film by Benjamin Unger and Matthias Hufmann is part of the 11mm International Football Film Festival, opening in Berlin this Thursday. It's an ode to football as a transformative experience, which, at its best, can unite people from different cultures and backgrounds.
Souleymane's prowess as a striker helped launch the small-town team into the first division. Yet, once they arrived, he was met with a nasty surprise: An East German statute barred foreigners from playing in the first division.
In 1962, he returned to Guinea, where his football career blossomed. He played for Guinea in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and was African Footballer of the Year in 1972.
Today, as he walks through the streets at home, he is flanked by young men who look up to him. Although he may not be the actual Pelé, he's undoubtedly Guinea's football VIP.
Souleymane: An acclaimed player in Neubrandenburg, but barred from playing in the first divisionImage: NDR
The film focuses on Souleymane's strong relationships with his teammates and his feeling of being largely accepted in a small community where it was far from common to meet an African person. "Children touched me to see if I had coal on my skin," he recalls in the film. "Everyone was curious about why I had come to the GDR."
There were also unpleasant experiences: the parents of his German girlfriend turning down his marriage proposal, racist slurs hurled by players from opposing teams. Yet overall, Souleymane's story seems to be one of acceptance.
DW spoke with filmmaker Benjamin Unger about why this story is still relevant today.
Why did you choose to do a film about this Souleymane? Is he well-known in Germany?
In Germany, almost nobody knows him. But in Neubrandenburg he is very well-known by sports fans, because it was such a special time when he was in the GDR back then. It's simply fascinating that here in Germany he couldn't play in the first division because he was a foreigner. And he had such incredible talent and an amazing career.
Neubrandenburg is in northeastern Germany and now has a population of about 65,000Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Wüstneck
Why weren't foreigners allowed to play in the first division?
The GDR football wanted their own people to play football well and basically be the best so there's the feeling that the GDR is strong. It's a bit political because it's a sign to those outside the GDR that its citizens are the best football players.
Souleyman came to Germany through a GDR exchange program with Guinea. Many people outside of Germany may not know that communist East Germany had student and worker exchange programs with African countries. What were these programs?
There was a big exchange with Angola, as well as Mozambique. At the time, it was a little bit unclear what kind of state Guinea would become: Would it be a socialist country or a democratic one? It cooperated a little bit with the East German state but also with West Germany. The GDR tried to work with many African countries to gain recognition. It was a little bit of a game where East Germany tried to be internationally present.
So it was essentially a form of diplomacy?
The GDR wanted to be internationally recognized… with many connections internationally, they would be strong. That they could basically say, "We are very international, we have many allies all over the world." They could tell their citizens, "Look at how powerful we are; how many countries recognize us." They had a lot of exchanges with students and workers coming to the GDR who could then go back to their countries and talk about how great the GDR was. That was also part of the idea.
Africa and communist East Germany
Communist East Germany sought ties with African states which leaned ideologically towards the Soviet Union such as Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Tanzania. This era ended with German reunification 25 years ago.
Image: Ismael Miquidade
Vocational training far from the civil war battleground
Skilled workers from African socialist and Marxist-Leninist states received vocational training in communist East Germany until it was reunified with West Germany. In 1983 while a civil war was raging at home, these Angolans were taking part in a six month course at the Central Institute for Industrial Safety in Dresden. East Germany backed the Marxist-Leninist MPLA regime.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-1983-0516-022 /U. Häßler
Solidarity with African liberation movements
A plane from the East German airline Interflug at Luanda airport. It is carrying supplies for Angolan schools. In 1978, other beneficiaries of East Germany's Solidarity Committee, which coordinated development aid, included the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), the African National Congress (ANC), Ethiopia and Mozambique.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-T0517-0022/R. Mittelstädt
Courses for African journalists
East Germany trained hundreds of African journalists from almost every corner of the continent. They attended the 'School of Solidarity' run by the Federation of East German Journalists in Friedrichshagen, East Berlin. This course for young journalists from Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe took place in December 1976.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-R1210-302
'School of Friendship'
Margot Honecker, education minister and wife of East German leader Erich Honecker, greets Samora Machel, Mozambique's first president at the School of Friendship in Straßfurt in 1983. Mozambique and East Germany had agreed in 1979 that 899 Mozambican children would attend the East German school over a four year period.
Image: Bundesarchiv/Bild 183-1983-0303-423/H. Link
Dr Agostinho Neto High School
While President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola was visiting East Germany, High School No. 26 in Pankow, East Berlin was renamed in honor of his predecessor, Dr Agostinho Neto. Members of the communist East German youth league, FDJ, welcomed the Angolan president waving banners which read "On the side of the Soviet Union, for peace and socialism!"
Angolan President dos Santos (5th from left) also visited the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate in East Berlin. East Germany sealed off the western sectors of Berlin in August 1961 to prevent disgruntled East Germans from fleeing to the West. East Berlin called the Wall as the "anti-fascist barrier." Some 200 people were killed by communist border guards while trying to cross it.
Image: Bundesarchiv
African guests at East German Communist Party congresses
The ruling East German Communist Party (SED) was always pleased to welcome foreign guests of the right ideological temperament to their congresses. Guests in 1981 included Ambrosi Lukoki (back row far right), member of the MPLA from Angola, as well as Berhanu Bayeh (back row 2nd from left), later to become foreign minister in Ethiopia's Marxist-Leninist Derg dictatorship.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-Z0041-138/M. Siebahn
East German Communist Party (SED) functionaries in Africa
High-ranking African Marxist-Leninists visited East Germany and their East German counterparts returned the compliment by travelling to Africa. East German politburo member Konrad Naumann (2nd row, right) attended the third party congress of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in Bissau in November 1977.
Communist indoctrination of schoolchildren in East Germany spilled over into the holidays when they attended camps for the Young Pioneers and Thälmann Pioneers youth organizations. The visitor from the People's Republic of Congo is being introduced to Die Trommel, the Thälmann Pioneers' magazine at the Pionerrrepublik Wilhelm Pieck camp near East Berlin.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-T0803-0302
A weekend with an East German family
Young African visitors, attending a summer camp in 1982, spent a weekend with East German families. A special train took them to Schwedt, an industrial town closer to the border with Poland. Sandra Maria Bernardo from Angola is welcomed by her host Ingeborg Scholz and daughter Petra.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-1982-0731-010 /K. Franke
Tractors for 'fraternal socialist states'
In 1979 tractors made by the East German tractor plant in Schönebeck were donated to Ethiopia, then a Marxist-Leninist state. The ZT 300-C tractor was exported to a total of 26 countries, including Angola and Mozambique.
Image: Bundesarchiv/183-U1110-0001/Schulz
East German textile machinery in Ethiopia
This textile factory in Kombolcha in the Ethiopian province of Amhara (picture: November 2005) produces sheets and towels. It was built in 1984 with the support of East Germany and Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia). Almost all of the machinery was made by the East German collective combine TEXTIMA in the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz).
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
East German prefab in Zanzibar
The state of Tanzania was founded by Julius Nyerere in 1964. East Germany supported his experiment in socialism by erecting a long row of prefabricated concrete buildings in Zanzibar. The prefab blocks were freighted to Zanzibar by sea and were assembled on arrival. The 'Michenzani,' as it is called, is still standing.
Image: cc-by-sa/Sigrun Lingel
Wages unpaid 25 years after East Germany's demise
Some 15,000 Mozambicans worked as contract labor in East Germany in the late 1980s. Most returned home after East Germany's reunification with West Germany on October 3, 1990. Back home the Mozambicans were called 'Madgermanes' - a derivation of 'Made in Germany.' The Mozambican state never paid them the wages for work they did in East Germany. They protest regularly in Maputo to this day.
Image: Ismael Miquidade
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In many ways, this story it reminds me of a situation we might still see in Germany today, as a story of acceptance in a small town where refugees have come to live in recent years. How do you see this story as being relevant today?
The relevance to today is that it shows that on the personal level, that there are no borders. When in East Germany today in a city like Neubrandenburg there are no foreigners on the sports teams or in the workplace or in the middle of a neighborhood, then one can start to feel that foreigners are a danger to Germany — basically populist assumptions. As soon as people get to know one another on a personal level, they see each other simply as people and see how great one's personality can be.
With Chérif, everyone who spent time with him in Neubrandenburg says first that he was a very dignified, great person…it's not about how good of a football player he was, he was also that, but the first thing they say is that he was an amazing person.
Considering refugees in Germany today, if they could be allowed to work, play on football teams, live in the middle of neighborhoods or do an activity together with locals on the weekend, ride bikes together, that is so important and it was the core of the situation with Chérif.
The 11mm International Football Film Festival Berlin is held from March 21 - 25, and the film Pelé aus Neubrandenburg screens on Friday.
