I was lying on the sofa, watching the documentary “Schumacher” on Netflix and googling pictures about my racing career, and suddenly there was his autograph card.
It surprised me, this Edding signature - the distinctive M. and the curved, space-consuming Sch - but it only surprised me briefly.
In the front left of the drawer in the desk, where it always lies, I took out the business card that had gone soft - Michael Schumacher, lawyer - turned the card over and held it next to the cell phone.
My father had signed for me on the back with a ballpoint pen, probably twenty years ago, so that I could copy his signature and get the momentum out and in, because neither of us wanted me to be the thin, way too long, totally unglamorous Got my mother's double name signature. But it wasn't even his signature. He had copied too, like me, a fan of his star.
I never got it, and even after the nostalgia trip of this new Netflix documentary, I didn't quite get it: Michael Schumacher's worldwide fame and huge success.
The Ferrari bedclothes and Ferrari caps and Ferrari flags with the clean-shaven Schumacher and his eternal grin on them, the hype about this slim 1.74-meter Rhinelander in a racing suit, which always sounded a little like Carnival and a little bit faster when everyone else drove a car.
Schumacher's smooth legendary image adds absolutely nothing new to the documentary - an uncompromising perfectionist on the line, a loving, almost shy family man at home - and yet, despite the fact that the big, dark question of health is omitted, the film has been on the Netflix for days. Charts way up in the top 10.
Like when he was a child before his races
Old friends remember Schumacher's victories as if they were theirs.
His blond wife and children talk about their husband and superstar father, somewhat robotic, but always personable.
A German sports legend, with a tragic turn.
And yet I was sitting in front of it, just like when I was a child before his races, somehow fascinated, and during the big Schumacher moments I thought of my little Schumacher moments.
Almost with every holiday there is a new one, and with this all-German name it should be the same for many.
“Like the driver?” Asked the big Bosnian policeman again this summer, who waved me out, because a few hundred meters earlier his colleague had caught me on the side of the road with a handheld flash.
"Schumacher - like the driver"
"Like the racing driver?" The policeman asked now as he stood at the driver's door and inspected my driver's license. "Yes, like the driver," I said, smiling extra friendly. "Mister Schumacher," he said, turning the card of my driver's license in his hand: "No racing here." There was a twinkle in his eyes, and then I knew he would let me drive.
Like many children from the 1990s, I grew up with Michael Schumacher, but in my case it was two Michael Schumacher's.
Both were always in sight, but one was seldom and the other never around, as it should be for stars.
My father didn't live with us, not with my mother, my sister and me, he wasn't part of our family of three.
After my parents separated a few years after my birth, he, the eternal son of a mum, moved back into his mother's house, but mostly he lived in the office anyway.