Fussball, as soccer is known here, looms large in the national psyche. In a country of 81 million people, the national soccer association is just shy of seven million members. There are 25,075 local soccer clubs. Freekickerz, a soccer website, is the biggest YouTube site in Germany, with more than five million subscribers. Men, in particular, schedule important life events like weddings around (even more) important matches.

“You know the famous saying,” said Uli Hesse, author of a book on German soccer. “There are three most popular sports in Germany: football, football and football.”

Accordingly, the German Football Museum in Dortmund had more than 200,000 visitors in its first year, and the appeal is growing, according to the city’s proud mayor, Ullrich Sierau, an ardent fan of a multimedia museum he hails as “almost a visualization of Germany.”

“It shows you the connection between society and football,” he said.

Any soccer fan — in fact, almost any German — will tell you that the moment the country first felt able to return with dignity to the international arena after the evil of Nazism came with what is known here as “the miracle of Bern,” the 3-2 victory in Switzerland over favored Hungary to win the World Cup in 1954.

Museum visitors are thus greeted with life-size portraits of the 1954 West German team and biographies of the players, above all the captain, Fritz Walter, and the coach, Sepp Herberger. A 1950s radio set broadcasts the commentary to the game — one player is hailed as “a god of football” — and a vintage TV shows black-and-white footage of the match.