Panel discussion | Women’s football: past and present

At the beginning of the 20th century, women’s football initially experienced a boom in many European countries. One of the pioneers of Austrian football was Ella Zirner-Zwieback. She was president and co-founder of the first Austrian Women’s Football Union in 1936. Between the 1950s and 1970s – and in some cases even earlier – bans were imposed and women’s football departments and associations across Europe were disbanded. In Germany, the ban was lifted on 31 October 1970, followed by steady progress, which has gained increasing momentum in recent years. Nevertheless, we are still a long way from achieving equality.

Together with Petra Landers (former international player and European champion), Kyra Malinowski (head coach of VFL Bochum 1848 Women), Elena Müller (MeDiF-NRW) and Henry Wahlig and Lena Zirkel (German Football Museum), we aim to examine and discuss the developments and current issues.

The evening will be framed and introduced by a reading from the book Ella and Laura: About Our Fathers’ Mothers, from which Ella Zirner-Zwieback’s grandson, August Zirner (actor), will read and talk about her.

The event will be moderated by Jacob Liedtke (project assistant at NIV, Fritz Bauer Forum)

The series is part of the ‘Stories that Take Root’ project, in which trees in the garden of the Fritz Bauer Forum are dedicated to people who have championed human rights and democracy, and from whom we can learn, particularly in light of the challenges of the present day. During the event, we will, amongst other things, dedicate a tree in the Garden of Diversity to Ella Zirner-Zwieback.

The event is supported by ‘Demokratie leben!’

Here you will find a selection of reading material relating to the event at the Fritz Bauer Library (opening hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 10.00–16.00, and by appointment).

Petra Landers played street soccer with boys before her career began with FC Bochum and TuS Harpen (women’s team). With SSG 09 Bergisch-Gladbach, she won the unofficial Women’s World Cup in Taiwan in 1981. She celebrated further successes as a player on the national team in 1982, as a DFB Cup champion, European champion, German champion, and world record holder. Today, she advocates for respect, recognition, and equal opportunities for girls and women worldwide. Since 2023, she has run her own organization, “Faces of Football,” a mobile soccer school in the Upper East Region of Bolgatanga, Ghana. She visits various communities to give girls access to soccer. Image: ©Petra Landers

Kyra Malinowski comes from a soccer-crazy family in Bochum; she started playing soccer at age 3, thanks to her brother, who is a year older than she is. Among other things, she played in the Women’s Bundesliga for SGS Essen and represented all the national youth teams from U15 to U20. She was a tenured teacher at a comprehensive school and has been employed full-time by VfL for the past 2 1/2 years. Image: ©Judith Büthe

Elena Müller has been part of the team since the Discrimination Reporting Center for Soccer in North Rhine-Westphalia was established (as a student assistant starting in 2022, and as part of the project management team since 2023). Her work focuses on quantitative analysis, networking, and the development and implementation of needs-based and target-group-specific educational, counseling, and awareness-raising programs in amateur and professional soccer. In addition, as a representative of MeDiF-NRW, she volunteers with the “Network Against Sexism and Sexualized Violence in Soccer” and advises and trains clubs and associations on the sustainable development and implementation of awareness-raising structures. Image: ©MeDiF-NRW

Henry Wahlig, born in 1980 in London, Canada, studied history in Düsseldorf, Vancouver, and Lausanne. He earned his doctorate in Hanover and Jerusalem with a dissertation on the Jewish sports movement in Nazi Germany. Since 2015, he has headed the cultural and events program at the German Soccer Museum in Dortmund, where he discovered the unusual soccer story of Ella Zirner-Zwieback.

August Zirner, born and raised in Illinois, returned to Vienna—his parents’ former homeland—in the early 1970s as the son of Jewish immigrants. He trained at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna; after holding permanent engagements at the state theaters in Hanover and Wiesbaden and spending eight years at the Münchner Kammerspiele, he now works as a freelance actor in film, television, and theater. Guest engagements have repeatedly taken him to the theaters in Bochum and Zurich, to the Burgtheater and the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, as well as to the Volkstheater and the Residenztheater in Munich. On the big screen, he has appeared in films by Franz Xaver Bogner, Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Kaufmann, and Margarethe von Trotta, among others. He received the Grimme Prize in 2006 for the film “Wut.” Image: ©Elena Zaucke

Lena Zirkel earned a bachelor’s degree in history and theater studies and a master’s degree in public history and history from Ruhr University Bochum. She initially worked as a student assistant and later as a research assistant at the Mining History Documentation Center (montan.dok) at the German Mining Museum in Bochum; today, she is jointly responsible for the cultural and events program at the German Soccer Museum in Dortmund.

An event organised by the Fritz Bauer Forum