Producer

Leopold Hoesch

Director

Torsten Körner

Creative Producer

Franziska Rempe & Felix Gottschalk

Genre

Sport

Broadcaster

MagentaTV, ZDF/ARTE

Length

3 x 52'

Editor

André Hammesfahr

Year

2024

Beckenbauer

The last emperor

Franz Beckenbauer has made history on the soccer pitch and far beyond. The sporting icon would have turned 80 in 2025. In the three-part MagentaTV original "Beckenbauer - The Last Emperor", Grimme Award winner Torsten Körner ("Black Eagles" , "Femocracy") looks back on the eventful life of the Munich native.

In three episodes, the documentary "Beckenbauer - The Last Emperor" tells the story of a life that was as exuberant as if it had been more than one. Torsten Körner, who wrote the highly acclaimed biography "The Free Man" together with Franz Beckenbauer 20 years ago, has created a historically focused, sometimes nostalgic life journey that connects Beckenbauer's private life with his public life, the real with the imaginary. From Munich's "broken glass district" of Giesing to the hearts of the Germans and onwards and upwards to New York, from the 1966 World Cup to a global figure and as the "Emporer" and "shining light" to the most famous German in the world: "Beckenbauer - The Last Emperor" makes clear, as rarely before, what the modernity of the player and that of the "pop star" Beckenbauer consisted of. It tells the story of a man who was the subject of much adulation from the worlds of advertising, politics and business and who became a cosmopolitan and the nation's lucky charm. And it tells how he was not only the libero in the grandiose Bayern ensemble of the 1960s and 1970s, but also the team player. Thanks to the Beckenbauer generation, FC Bayern Munich became one of the most glamorous clubs in the world. Soccer became socially acceptable - a development in which Beckenbauer and his manager Robert Schwan played a major role.

Last but not least, "Beckenbauer - The Last Emperor" is also a journey through the history of the Republic, looking into the soul of the Germans, from the year Beckenbauer was born in 1945, through the golden years of FC Bayern and the 1974 and 1990 World Cups, to the "summer fairytale" of 2006 and its aftermath. And just as Beckenbauer himself came into the limelight, he also influenced a whole generation of mainly men, some of whom - alongside Beckenbauer's brother Walter - have their say. Among them are Matthias Brandt, Alfred Draxler, Uli Hoeneß, Thomas Hüetlin, Günther Jauch, Jürgen Klinsmann, Günter Netzer, Christian Petzold, Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Wolfgang Thierse, Oliver Welke and Arnd Zeigler. Whether footballer or actor, entertainer or historian, they all help to present the "Kaiser" as the alternative majesty that Germany's parliamentary democracy never had. And they describe who Franz Beckenbauer was to them: role model, consolation figure, comrade, coach, teammate and friend.

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