Even the short version of his life reads like a jam-packed feature film: William Georg Hartwig was born in 1954 to a German mother and an American soldier in a problem district in Offenbach, grew up there without a father and made it into a professional footballer and national player.
He played 244 Bundesliga games (63 goals) and 49 European Cup games (nine goals).
With HSV, the midfielder was German champion three times and the national champion in 1983.
Hartwig is married to his fourth marriage, has three children, lives with his family on the Ammersee and has jumped death several times.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
Let's start with our youth: What was it like as a dark-skinned boy in Offenbach in the 1950s?
Jimmy Hartwig:
Not pretty.
I grew up on Kirschenallee, not such a good area.
The children in the neighborhood and I didn't have the best cards at school.
My dyslexia remained undetected, the teachers made it easy for themselves and only said that I was too stupid to read and write.
WELT AM SONNTAG:
Was there no support at home either?
Hartwig:
I more or less grew up with my grandparents, but that was difficult too.
My grandpa often took advantage of it to show the bastard that he doesn't belong in this world.
He was a Nazi, and then his daughter comes home and says, “I'm pregnant with a dark-skinned man.” I wasn't allowed to be born at home either, but my mother had to go over to the neighbor and give birth there.