Franz Beckenbauer Quotes
You know the Dutch, they're always a bit funny... some of them.
Beckenbauer, Franz. Quoted in "Beckenbauer on the Dutch." De Telegraaf, Mediahuis Nederland, 26 June 1990.
The Germans were very ambivalent about Einstein. Although he was already recognized by the world as one of the greatest physicists of all time, he had never been recognized by the German academic establishment. He had been rejected by their universities as a faculty member and was a clerk in the Swiss patent office when he developed his Theory of Relativity. The Germans, then traditionally world scientific leaders, were proud that the greatest physicist was a German, but the fact that he was Jewish stuck in the craw of the developing anti-Semitic government and many Germans.
The French were culturally not very warlike or militaristic and in the past two centuries had not been very aggressive like the British or the Germans. The Kaiser showed is ethnic ignorance in that the Anglo-Saxons were the merging of two people the English Saxons and the French who under William the Conqueror had defeated the Saxons. However, that was a common perception in racist Germany at the time. Most important however was that the Kaiser and the German military believed it and the fact that France may enter WWI against them was not taken as a serious threat so the German aggression proceeded. The French military gave Germany much more difficulty in the battlefield than they anticipated.
Franz Anton Beckenbauer is a German former professional footballer and manager. In his playing career he was nicknamed Der Kaiser ("The Emperor") because of his elegant style, dominance and leadership on the field, and also as his first name "Franz" is reminiscent of the Austrian emperors. He is widely regarded to be one of the greatest players in the history of the sport. A versatile player who started out as a midfielder, Beckenbauer made his name as a central defender. He is often credited as having invented the role of the modern sweeper (libero).
