Bridging east and west, the Ballack way

That such visible figures as Ballack and Chancellor Angela Merkel are eastern German suggests both how far the country has come since unification. To many Germans, Ballack, soon to be 30, is simply an outstanding midfielder, perhaps the only truly elite player on the national Mannschaft, which the German team is known as.

For others, Ballack is more complicated: His socialist upbringing has either made him ideal to marshal the collective aspirations of a team or left him lacking the individual assertiveness required of a leader.

“This is a sign of progress,” Pierre Gottschlich, a political scientist at the University of Rostock. “Think about it as a game played on certain levels. We’ve gone from the first level, where everybody thinks of him as East German, to the second level, where some see him as East German and others don’t, and we’re getting to the next level, where it doesn’t matter at all. Probably in another 10 or 20 years, we’ll get there.”

For western Germans, it does not appear to matter much that Ballack is from eastern Germany. After all, the Berlin Wall has been down for 17 years.

Dieter Jutting, a sociologist and a soccer expert at the University of Munster, noted that three others on the World Cup roster were eastern Germans; that starting forwards Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski were born in Poland; and that Coach Juergen Klinsmann lived in Southern California.

But in eastern Germany, the connection to Ballack seems to matter a great deal for many. Part of it is pride in a local boy who made good. But the appreciation for Ballack also seems related to the difficult transition many eastern Germans have experienced since unification, and to a much-discussed nostalgia about old times in the east, known as ostalgie.

“For the self-confidence of eastern Germans, which doesn’t exist, it is quite important that Ballack succeeded at a high level,’’ said Joachim Muller, 53, one of Ballack’s youth coaches at the F.C. Chemnitzer soccer club. “He grew up here and was educated here and he made it.”

Ballack’s view of himself in the context of East and West is seldom expressed. He did say recently to Neues Deutschland, formerly the communist party’s official newspaper, that he saw no nationalistic danger in the flag-waving and joyful patriotism at the World Cup. “In the host country, it has to be this way,” Ballack said. He is among the last generation of athletes trained in the highly efficient East German system, which was based on sports schools and was focused mainly on Olympic sports for propaganda reasons.

But since East Germany’s dissolution, many eastern soccer clubs have struggled to remain competitive, given a lack of financing and management skills in the chaotic switch to capitalism. The perennial champion among East German clubs, Dynamo Berlin – which was supported by the Stasi, or secret police, and was reviled for manipulating the outcome of games – sank so low after the Wall fell that it resorted to selling microwave ovens and scooters to earn cash, according to news accounts.

By 1997, Ballack had left Chemnitz, where he had been sent to train as a boy from his hometown of Gorlitz. He signed with the western German club Kaiserslautern, and eventually went to Bayern Munich.

At the 2002 World Cup, Ballack led an unspectacular German team to the final, where it lost to Brazil, 2-0. His goal on a header eliminated the United States, 1-0, in the quarter-finals, and he committed a necessary foul to preserve a semifinal victory against South Korea, even though he drew a second yellow card and disqualification from the final. For some, this notion of placing the team above himself is rooted in Ballack’s socialist upbringing and makes him a perfect captain of the national team.

Yet after Germany had a disastrous performance at the 2004 European Championships in Portugal, some German reporters questioned whether Ballack’s eastern background left him with enough individuality to be a leader.

Bruised feelings emerged again this spring, while Ballack’s transfer from Bayern Munich to Chelsea was being negotiated. Uli Hoeness, Bayern’s general manger, said Ballack was interested only in his bank account. Franz Beckenbauer, Germany’s soccer icon, accused Ballack of “not even trying” in Bundesliga games.

All will be forgiven, of course, if Ballack and Germany win the World Cup and gain redemption from 2002. “We’ve had a depressed mood in Germany. If Ballack can score the decisive goal in the final, that would really be good for Germany unity,”said Neuss, the Chemnitz professor. Jere Longman