Thomas Müller: Patron saint of Bavaria

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge once said that if you were to carve a Bavarian footballer, Thomas Müller would be the result. Our club magazine '51' took the long-time FCB CEO at his word, because in over 700 professional games full of dents and cuts, you become an iconic figure.

Patron saint of Bavaria

Martin Reichart brushes his thumb over Thomas Müller's shoe and looks up. "Oh, I can see something else," he mumbles. One part is sticking out of the wood a little too high. The figure is actually finished carving, but now Reichart still finds little things that don't suit him. Using a carving knife and sandpaper, he reworks a few areas: the shoe, a buttonhole, a crease on the jacket sleeve. Fine wood shavings sail to the floor. "I can't keep looking, otherwise I'll always notice something new," he says, putting his tools aside. You also have to know when to stop. After a total of 80 hours of work – plus 20 hours for the plasticine model – his Thomas Müller is finished. Forty centimetres high, carved from a single piece of wood. An icon for an icon. Of course, every detail has to be right. "This was a very special commission," says Reichart, "it's something you do maybe once in a lifetime."

Two weeks earlier: when you enter Reichart's workshop in Hadorf near Starnberg, you feel like you're visiting Master Eder. You immediately feel at home. When the sun shines through the window, all the wood in the room takes on a golden glow. There is an old wood-burning stove in the centre, which is sure to provide cosy warmth on cold days. Mobile phones have no reception here. Reichart stands in the wood shavings wearing a blue apron and slippers. "This is my realm," says the 55-year-old. The shelves and display cabinets around him are teeming with carved figures: sheep, camels, skulls, skeletons, saints, peasants, crucifixes, a bust of King Ludwig II, a pomegranate bowl with a miniature carving workshop carved into it.

In the midst of this fantasy world, Thomas Müller plays Pumuckl. The Bayern star has been giving Reichart no rest for a week now. He stands on a small table in the workshop with a cheeky, cheerful grin. Reichart looks critically at the grey plasticine model through his glasses. "I have the feeling that the mouth doesn't fit yet," he says, pulling one corner of the mouth slightly higher with a narrow spatula. "It's not much, but it makes a big difference," he says. He also removes some more plasticine from the knee to better emphasise the thigh muscle. Reichart is of course familiar with Müller, as he's interested in football. And Müller's home town of Pähl is only 20 minutes away from Hadorf by car. "Müller radiates something: self-confidence, ease, humour," adds Reichart. "His demeanour and facial expressions are so distinctive. I hope I manage to transfer all that into the wood."

Graduate of Oberammergau

When Müller was born in 1989, Reichart was in the middle of his apprenticeship. He only ever wanted to become a carver and was already taking courses as a schoolboy. He later learnt the craft properly in Oberammergau. The village has been world-famous for its carvers of crucifixes for centuries. Reichart attended the carving school there for three years and spent a further three years learning in a traditional carving workshop. In 1991, he finally set up his own business, converting the old cowshed of his parents' house into a workshop. "For me, wood is a warm material that can be beautifully moulded," he explains his fascination for a material that stands for rootedness and down-to-earthness, but can also be artistically refined. A material made for Thomas Müller.

The Müller in Reichart's workshop is carved from lime wood, which has the advantage that it is "consistently soft" with its even annual rings, explains Reichart. Consistent like Müller's career: always at the top level, always indestructible. He joined FC Bayern's youth programme as an 11-year-old in 2000, made his debut in the Bundesliga in 2008 and has since made over 700 appearances for the first team. He's just a few games away from overtaking Sepp Maier (709) as Bayern's record appearance maker.

Of course, the years have left their mark – nicks and cuts that have moulded him as a footballer and a person and turned him into an icon. We will never forget how, in the 123rd minute of the 2014 DFB Cup final, Müller, plagued by cramps, ran halfway across the pitch alone towards Dortmund's goal and stuck the ball in the net with his last ounce of strength; how he scored the supposed 1-0 winner with his head in the 2012 ‘Finale dahoam’; how he finally lifted the Champions League trophy into the sky at Wembley a year later. Müller's statistics speak for themselves: with 33 titles, 32 of them with Bayern, he is the most decorated German footballer of all time; he is the record Bundesliga champion, record German Champions League goalscorer and Bundesliga record provider; he was a World Cup winner in 2014.

All of this comes together in Reichart's workshop. The carver is now working on a block of wood that he has cut out of the lime tree trunk. Using a paper template, he has transferred the rough outline of the model onto the wood and sawn it out. Now the block stands on a workbench, Reichart carves it with a carving iron and a mallet, a round wooden hammer. He proceeds from front to back, starting with the points of the figure that protrude the furthest: the tip of the right shoe, the right knee, the tip of the jacket, the tip of the nose. Using a compass and square, he measures the model and works his way down the wood to the exact height, width and depth of the point. The work therefore requires not only feeling and a sense of proportion, but also mathematical precision. "If you work purely by feel, you can get it wrong very quickly," explains Reichart. "Take the jacket pocket here, for example: I would have thought it was much further down." Blow by blow, chip by chip, the carver peels the figure out of the wood. From the tip of the nose, he continues with the cheeks, the earlobes, as the initially wide carving tools become finer and finer the more he works on the details. He spends up to eight hours a day in the workshop. "I still have a lot of work ahead of me," he says.

Detailed down to the tip of the nose

Two weeks later, Müller's wooden figure stands in the workshop as a likeness of the plasticine model. Reichart worked through Easter. ‘Pumuckl’ Müller was constantly haunting his mind. Once he was sitting on the sofa with his wife in the evening, he tells, but in his head he was with Müller. "I said to my wife: we have to go back down to the workshop and see if it fits." Even at night in bed, his thoughts kept turning to the figure. He worked on his mouth in particular for a long time. How wide should it be open? Can you see teeth? How high does one corner of the mouth go? And he changed the hair again and again – longer or shorter? More tousled or more styled? Reichart used many pictures as models, which he put up on a board behind his workbench. The only problem was: which Müller should he model himself on? "There are so many photos of him, everyone has their own image of him, and he looks a little different everywhere," says Reichart. Like a footballer on the pitch, he had to make decisions – and got to know Müller in a new way. That he has "a relatively thin neck" and "fine hands but long thumbs". That the tip of Müller's nose points slightly to the right. "It was a challenge," says the carver, "and it was fun."

Another week later, Reichart drives three quarters of an hour south by car, along Lake Starnberg and halfway past Pähl to Froschhausen. Franz Schindler lives and works in the small village as a gilder and barrel painter, a craft that is closely interwoven with woodcarving. Reichart and Schindler know each other from their time together in Oberammergau. Even behind the front door there is a smell of colour. To the left is the house, to the right Schindler's workshop. His wife has put a small sign on the door. ‘I'm retired,’ it says, but her husband takes no notice. Schindler will soon be 75 and has been suffering from pain in his right hand for some time. He has postponed the necessary operation especially for Thomas Müller. "When I have a paintbrush in my hand, I don't feel the pain," he says with a grin.

Technique from Middle Ages

Schindler's workshop is also a hodgepodge. Everywhere you look, you can see what he is working on: carnival masks, baroque angels, nativity scenes and figures of saints. In the far corner, there are floor-to-ceiling shelves full of paint and a mountain of brushes on the worktable. Next to it stands Müller in all his splendour. "It's amazing how the figure looks now," says Reichart approvingly. Schindler has also been guided by photos. Hair (brown), eyes (blue-green), wedding ring (silver) – everything has to be true to the original colour and look natural.

Of course, the process is no different to his other projects, he says: "The technique is still the same as in the Middle Ages." He primed the wooden figure several times with bone glue and stone chalk. After drying and sanding, he painted it. Schindler always starts with the face, hands and feet, followed by the rest of the figure from top to bottom. Finally, he applied a wax patina and polished everything. Schindler is well versed in the process, but when he wanted to paint the jersey under the jacket, he stopped: red? "That doesn't work under a traditional costume," he says. Normally you wear a white shirt. But he was persuaded and is happy with the result: "Now I like it like this too."

Red is Schindler's colour anyway. He's a passionate Bayern fan and likes Müller, because he's also someone who's round around the edges. "Thomas always fronts up to the cameras and explains why they've lost or won – I like that," he says, grinning: "I still remember how we asked ourselves after Thomas' first game: what does he want with his sparrow calves?" And now Müller is an icon.