kilometres south of Mönchengladbach. His attic flat was vacant, he told them. So late in 1997, Teresa took one last photograph of Loosenweg, with the china geese in the garden, and they carried their furniture out of the flat. Corinna called out, by way of farewell, ‘So much noise at ten o’clock at night, it’s outrageous!’ Robert shouted back, for the first time. ‘Now, give us a break, Corinna, we’re moving out. In a few minutes you’ll never see us again, so at least leave us in peace right now!’
Drive along the old rural road from Mönchengladbach by way of Wey, through turnip and wheat fields, and in some places the road almost becomes a country lane. After Hoppers you get to Gierath. Over the past thirty years Gierath has changed enormously. The newly built area looms over the heart of the village. It still has only 1,500 inhabitants.
Robert and Teresa Enke were quickly integrated by Markus Breuer and his wife Erika.
On the ground floor of his house on Schulstrasse, Breuer runs a sports shop. One day he had to go out for a while. His wife had taken the child to the doctor, so he rang the bell of the attic flat. ‘Robert, could you take over the shop for half an hour?’
Not long after that a customer came in and asked for some goalkeeping gloves. ‘Do you know anything about them?’
‘A bit,’ replied Robert.
He told the local league goalie all about the difference between five- and six-millimetre foam stuffing, titanium foam and natural latex. When Breuer got back, the customer, who was about to leave, asked him, ‘Who’s that new salesman you’ve got there? He’s really nice. And he even knows what he’s talking about.’
Breuer introduced them to Hubert Rosskamp who liked to hunt and who took the dogs off their hands from time to time – they had two of them by now. In the afternoon after training, Robert often went walking through the fields with Hubert and the dogs. ‘You couldn’t tell what he was, he was dressed so normally,’ Hubert recalls.
6. Robert with Hubert Rosskamp in front of Rosskamp’s house in Gierath .
Hubert worked as an industrial buyer at Rheinmetall in D ü sseldorf. He has turned his living-room into a personal museum; Robert’s football shirts hang all over the place, bearing the inscription ‘For my friend Hubert’. On the shelf in Hubert’s kitchen Robert and Teresa’s wedding photograph is right at the front; the photographs of his family have been placed behind it.
In the afternoons in the fields, Hubert asked Robert questions. Tell me, how do you actually dive as a goalkeeper? Aren’t you scared when the strikers come at you? When he dives for a ball a goalkeeper stretches his lower hand out slightly further than his upper hand, and tries to keep both hands parallel, Robert explained. And as for being scared, no, he certainly didn’t get scared. A healthy degree of nerves is important, but nothing more than that.
When he celebrated his twenty-first birthday late, a few days after 24 August 1998, Hubert was invited, and neighbours came along too, like Markus and Erike Breuer, and Teresa’s friend Christiane, who worked as a bouncer at a disco. The only people there from Borussia were Marco Villa and Jörg Neblung, the athletics coach whose individual training Robert had assiduously avoided in his first year. In July 1998 Borussia hadn’t extended Neblung’s contract, after four years. He had gone to work for the agency of Robert’s adviser, Norbert Pflipsen . There was sparkling wine, Christiane made pizza, and Hubert brought Robert strawberry tart, as usual. At the time Marco didn’t notice that apart from him there was no one there the same age as Robert, no close friends. ‘It was a pleasant enough party with just sweet, nice people,’ says Marco, ‘and Robbi was happy.’ Not least because of football.
Just before his twenty-first birthday, Robert Enke had suddenly become a man in the eyes of the public. On 7 August, Borussia were
Drive along the old rural road from Mönchengladbach by way of Wey, through turnip and wheat fields, and in some places the road almost becomes a country lane. After Hoppers you get to Gierath. Over the past thirty years Gierath has changed enormously. The newly built area looms over the heart of the village. It still has only 1,500 inhabitants.
Robert and Teresa Enke were quickly integrated by Markus Breuer and his wife Erika.
On the ground floor of his house on Schulstrasse, Breuer runs a sports shop. One day he had to go out for a while. His wife had taken the child to the doctor, so he rang the bell of the attic flat. ‘Robert, could you take over the shop for half an hour?’
Not long after that a customer came in and asked for some goalkeeping gloves. ‘Do you know anything about them?’
‘A bit,’ replied Robert.
He told the local league goalie all about the difference between five- and six-millimetre foam stuffing, titanium foam and natural latex. When Breuer got back, the customer, who was about to leave, asked him, ‘Who’s that new salesman you’ve got there? He’s really nice. And he even knows what he’s talking about.’
Breuer introduced them to Hubert Rosskamp who liked to hunt and who took the dogs off their hands from time to time – they had two of them by now. In the afternoon after training, Robert often went walking through the fields with Hubert and the dogs. ‘You couldn’t tell what he was, he was dressed so normally,’ Hubert recalls.
6. Robert with Hubert Rosskamp in front of Rosskamp’s house in Gierath .
Hubert worked as an industrial buyer at Rheinmetall in D ü sseldorf. He has turned his living-room into a personal museum; Robert’s football shirts hang all over the place, bearing the inscription ‘For my friend Hubert’. On the shelf in Hubert’s kitchen Robert and Teresa’s wedding photograph is right at the front; the photographs of his family have been placed behind it.
In the afternoons in the fields, Hubert asked Robert questions. Tell me, how do you actually dive as a goalkeeper? Aren’t you scared when the strikers come at you? When he dives for a ball a goalkeeper stretches his lower hand out slightly further than his upper hand, and tries to keep both hands parallel, Robert explained. And as for being scared, no, he certainly didn’t get scared. A healthy degree of nerves is important, but nothing more than that.
When he celebrated his twenty-first birthday late, a few days after 24 August 1998, Hubert was invited, and neighbours came along too, like Markus and Erike Breuer, and Teresa’s friend Christiane, who worked as a bouncer at a disco. The only people there from Borussia were Marco Villa and Jörg Neblung, the athletics coach whose individual training Robert had assiduously avoided in his first year. In July 1998 Borussia hadn’t extended Neblung’s contract, after four years. He had gone to work for the agency of Robert’s adviser, Norbert Pflipsen . There was sparkling wine, Christiane made pizza, and Hubert brought Robert strawberry tart, as usual. At the time Marco didn’t notice that apart from him there was no one there the same age as Robert, no close friends. ‘It was a pleasant enough party with just sweet, nice people,’ says Marco, ‘and Robbi was happy.’ Not least because of football.
Just before his twenty-first birthday, Robert Enke had suddenly become a man in the eyes of the public. On 7 August, Borussia were
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