Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the father of German gymnastics. His disciples would make life very hard for anyone who indulged in so-called un-German activities like football. Which is why eleven men walked out on their gymnastics club in 1900 to form their own team, Bayern Munich.
Kurt Landauer spent eighteen years as Bayern’s president and oversaw the team’s rise to the top. In 2013, the club named him Honorary President, a title bestowed on only three people. (The other two being Franz Beckenbauer and Wilhelm Neudecker.)
Bayern shared the Grünwalder Stadion ground with local rivals 1860 from 1926 (the year before this photo was taken) until 1972, when the Olympic Stadium opened.
Pulling in the same direction: coach Zlatko Čajkovski (l) gave Franz Beckenbauer his first-team debut.
Crosstown rivals trading blows: Bayern’s Sepp Maier (r) seems to get the better of 1860’s goalkeeper Petar Radenković.
Pre-season training in the 1960s: goalkeeper Fritz Kosar, striker Gerd Müller and midfielder Dieter Koulmann (l to r) use their teammates as vaulting horses.
Gerd Müller in his – and Bayern’s – first Bundesliga season, 1965–66. (The Gladbach player on the right is a young man by the name of Jupp Heynckes.)
May 1966: Franz Beckenbauer is voted Germany’s Footballer of the Year for the first time. He would win the award again in 1968, 1974 and 1976 – by which time the trophy was less unwieldy.
Flying the flag: a large number of Bayern fans followed their team to Nuremberg for the cup semi-final in 1966.
Werner Olk (l) captained Bayern from 1965 to 1970. Here he is exchanging penannts with Meiderich (today: MSV Duisburg) skipper Werner Krämer ahead of the 1966 cup final.
When you get a lot of post, Germans say there are ‘laundry baskets full of letters’. Franz Beckenbauer demonstrates how much fanmail he was being sent by 1966.
The architects of Bayern’s rise parade the cup in 1966. From left to right in the car: president Wilhelm Neudecker, Čajkovski, Olk and business manager Robert Schwan.
Franz Roth makes the difference in the 1967 Cup Winners’ Cup final against Rangers.
Franz Beckenbauer presents Bayern’s first European trophy to photographers. It wouldn’t be the last.
A dream come true: Franz Roth and the Cup Winners’ Cup his goal won for Bayern in 1967.
The Ghost of the Penalty Area: Gerd Müller materialises in Schalke’s box to score the winning goal in the 1969 cup final.
In the summer of 1969, shortly after his teammate Franz Beckenbauer had been dubbed Kaiser by the press, Gerd Müller posed as the King of the Goalscorers.
Midfielder Paul Breitner joined Bayern in the summer of 1970. Nine months later, coach Udo Lattek turned him into a left back.
Udo Lattek celebrates the first of many titles with Bayern, the 1971 DFB-Pokal. Robert Schwan (with his customary pipe and hat) joins in.
Gladbach striker Jupp Heynckes (l) and Uli Hoeness, were opponents during their playing days, but they would become good friends – and mastermind Bayern’s greatest achievement, the 2013 triple.
Uli Hoeness (l) and Paul Breitner, were such close pals they always shared a room on away trips.
A small man with a great football mind: Dettmar Cramer (r) is still the only Bayern coach to win the European Cup or the Champions League twice.
Two in a row: the Bayern team that denied Leeds United to lift the 1975 European Cup.
The Bull: Franz Roth delivers a powerful shot during yet another massive game he won for Bayern, the 1976 European Cup final against Saint-Étienne.
A young Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (l), Franz Roth (c) and defender Udo Horsmann celebrate Bayern’s third European Cup triumph in a row. The club would have to wait a quarter of a century for the fourth.
September 1978: the scoreboard at the Olympic Stadium documents one of the most embarrassing defeats in Bayern’s history, against second-division Osnabrück.
Gladbach goalkeeper Wolfgang Kneib makes a great save to deny Bayern midfielder Wolfgang Kraus (l). Gladbach won this game in late 1979, 2-1, but the end of the decade also means the end of their golden era. Bayern’s greatest domestic rival can no longer keep pace.
December 1977: it must have been a cold day in Munich, because assistant coach Pál Csernai (l) is not wearing his trademark silk scarf. Twelve months later, he will take over from Gyula Lóránt (r).
In November 1979, new president Willi O. Hoffmann establishes a tradition by dressing the entire squad in Lederhosen and cardigans. (Only Csernai, proud of being a dapper dresser, refuses to don Bavarian Tracht.)
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (l) and Paul Breitner (r) strike up such a productive partnership that the press dubs the duo Breitnigge.
In 1980, the man who scored one of the most important goals in Bayern’s history hung up his boots – and took over his aunt’s tiny newspaper and stationery shop. For the next 28 years, Georg Schwarzenbeck would be behind the counter every morning at six o’clock. (His aunt is on the left.)
In February 1982, Uli Hoeness was the sole survivor of a plane crash. He later said: ‘I survived, but the sunny boy in me died.’
On the first day of the 1982–83 season, Bayern’s Belgian goalkeeper Jean-Marie Pfaff concedes the only goal of the game at Werder Bremen from a throw-in. Still, Pfaff went on to be a hit (and a fan favourite) at Bayern.
On his last day in a Gladbach shirt, a 23-year-old Lothar Matthäus cannot hold back the tears after missing his penalty and losing the 1984 cup final against his new club Bayern.
Despite having sustained a head wound during the game, Dieter Hoeness heads home Bayern’s fourth goal to put the 1985 cup final out of Nuremberg’s reach.
Another Gladbach legend who went on to become a Bayern icon: Jupp Heynckes took over the Munich giants in 1987 – for the first but not the last time.
It’s a good thing Bulgarian international Emil Kostadinov is between Jürgen Klinsmann (l) and Lothar Matthäus (r). The two men would soon engage in a famous feud that helped garner Bayern the nickname FC Hollywood.
July 1995: on his first day as Bayern coach, Otto Rehhagel needs a megaphone to be heard above the tumult and the shouting. Welcome to Hollywood!
Uli Hoeness re-enacts how Jürgen Klinsmann, furious at being subbed, once kicked a hole into an advertising pillar which now stands in Bayern’s club museum.
The Day of the Wutrede: in March 1998, coach Giovanni Trapattoni, having lost patience with his FC Hollywood starlets, throws a tantrum that has gone down in history as the most entertaining three minutes and ten seconds in Bayern’s press room.
On a traumatic night in Barcelona, Manchester United come from behind in stoppage time to beat Bayern and win the 1999 Champions League final.
A home of their own: in May 2005, Bayern open their new Allianz Arena with a game against the German national team. (Bayern win 4-2. Their fans chant: ‘We’re better than the whole of the country.’)
Louis van Gaal was on the verge of becoming an honorary Bavarian, as he looked good in Tracht and lived the club’s motto Mia san mia, we are who we are, to perfection. But when he started to think he was bigger than the club, his days were numbered.
It’s still a Dutchman who finally delivers the elusive treble, though. A late goal from Arjen Robben (l) thrills Thomas Müller (r) and wins the 2013 Champions League final against new rivals Borussia Dortmund.
Bayern’s players urge Uli Hoeness to lift the coveted trophy. They know that nobody, not even Jupp Heynckes, has had a bigger share in this triumph.
And so it comes as a massive shock to the club when Hoeness, who for all practical purposes is Bayern Munich, stands trial for tax evasion in March 2014 and is sentenced to prison.
The best team they ever had? Under Pep Guardiola, Bayern dominate the league to an unprecedented degree, set records at will and win domestic trophies by the truckload.
And yet many fans are glad when Carlo Ancelotti arrives in Munich to take over the team. They think he’ll have a better understanding of what makes this club special. Of what it means to be Bavarian.