(2 of 4)
At a New Year's Eve party in Australia, Becker decided to go public with the romance. Just before he and Barbara ventured downstairs and danced together for all to see, he stood in a hotel room and told her, "Tomorrow your life will be completely different — for the rest of your life."
Barbara had no idea how bad it could be. Death threats poured in. People shouted at tournaments that Barbara was a gold digger, a "black witch." Becker, Germany's most famous man, adored for his so-called Germanic looks and furious game, had betrayed something deep. One headline wailed: "Why, Boris? Why not one of us?" Neither Boris nor Barbara flinched. Fifteen months later he secreted a diamond ring in her whiskey sour and proposed. They shocked Germans by posing nude for a photo on the cover of Stern magazine. Becker threatened to leave Germany if the racist rants didn't stop.
After they married in 1993 and Noah was born and their devotion showed no sign of abating, a sea change occurred. By the mid-'90s Boris and Barbara had risen to a high station in German society, serving as liberal poster parents, "a symbol of the new Germany," Becker says. Now when he spoke out, he had all the authority he could handle. "I've felt racism because of her, because of Noah," he says. "Because they look a little different, they get treated differently, so it's credible if I talk about it now."
"He was a kind of social hero," says Paul Sahner, a longtime friend of Becker's and a writer for Bunte magazine. "Many people lived their dreams through Boris and Barbara." So much so that, by 1997, when Becker curtailed his tournament play and their marriage started crumbling, Boris and Barbara still put on a perfect face. "We almost had no choice but to play along," says Becker, "and it put more pressure on the relationship than already existed. That's probably why we're divorced today. We started to play roles to please everyone."
The marriage ended with a spectacular crash. On Nov. 9, 2000, the 62nd anniversary of the Nazi attack on Jews known as Kristallnacht, Becker marched with 200,000 others through the streets of Berlin to protest Germany's rising tide of racist violence. He was the very picture of a serious man. Only one month later, he was an object of ridicule around the world.
Becker had no one to blame but himself. Since the previous March, he had been quietly pressed by a London-based Russian waitress-model for up to $5 million to support a daughter she claimed was his. Boris and Barbara agree that this didn't cause their split, but it didn't help that Barbara first learned of the baby when she took a call at home last August from the Russian woman herself.
On Nov. 23 Becker told his wife he wanted a separation, touching off an explosion of marital nastiness. He says divorce was the furthest thing from his mind, but less than a week later Barbara flew to Miami with their sons, and on Dec. 8 she applied in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court for financial protection, child support and use of the $3 million Fisher Island condominium — in effect sidestepping a prenuptial agreement that entitled her to a single $2.5 million payoff. Charges and countercharges flew, sending the German media into what the weekly Der Spiegel called a "state of emergency."
Out spilled one revelation after another. In early December the press linked Becker with a German rap star named Sabrina Setlur after they were seen checking into the same Black Forest hotel at which Boris and Barbara had honeymooned in 1993. On Jan. 12 the Russian waitress-model, Angela Ermakova, went public, claiming that she and Becker had had sex in a broom closet at London's Nobu restaurant on the last night of June 1999. Becker called Ermakova's story "false," and — though he never elaborated — a flurry of reports appeared saying Becker planned to claim that the two had engaged only in oral sex and that Ermakova had impregnated herself with his semen as part of a blackmail scheme.
On Feb. 4 Becker publicly blamed his divorce on Barbara's friendship with a racy group of Munich women who dubbed themselves the Tits and Ass Club. By contrast, he told Der Spiegel, "I took the job of father earnestly." He also told a German newspaper that the love between him and Setlur was a "little plant that must be fed." (Becker and Setlur have since broken up.) On Feb. 7 dna tests confirmed his paternity of Ermakova's child, and Becker agreed to make payments to Ermakova that will eventually total about $1.5 million. "I take responsibility," he said in a statement to the press. "Children are the most innocent people in our world."
It ended, as these things will, in a tawdry mess — and one in which Becker views himself as the greater victim. Divorce has a way of narrowing the broadest mind, and for the moment Becker's admits only his perspective. He has been deceitful but feels deceived. He admits affairs but insists that marriage should be bigger than infidelity, that it was his and Barbara's diverging priorities that led to the split.
"People kissed her ass, and she started to enjoy it," Becker says. "We didn't have enough time for us. There was too much party. She wanted to become a singer, and I'd say, 'We shouldn't forget family.' I'm not saying I was the best husband. I spent too much time away. But I was trying to make her aware that it's only the four of us. We're the boat, and we shouldn't rock the boat."
Barbara declined to be interviewed, but her divorce lawyer, Samuel I. Burstyn, says Boris' peccadillos alone set the boat rocking, and his rendezvous with Setlur at the honeymoon hotel convinced Barbara that the marriage was done. Boris, meanwhile, is sure Barbara had plotted to leave him for months. "I'm proud she is a smart lady and knows exactly what she's doing," he says. "I have more respect for her now than I had before."
This sounds odd, but then Becker also dined daily with his wife and kids during the legal maneuverings. On Jan. 4 he took the stand in a pretrial hearing and answered two hours of questions while Burstyn made him look like a cad for a live TV audience in Germany. That night, Becker went back to Fisher Island and, he says, told Barbara, "[If we go to trial], it's your turn. And not for two hours: my lawyer's going to grill you for six." Becker says she agreed to settle the case then, but Burstyn insists that two days before Becker was to give a deposition about his financial affairs, he called Burstyn at home and surrendered.
Either way, Becker lost. The boys would live with Barbara, she and Boris would share custody, and Barbara would get a package widely reported to be worth $14.4 million. Becker's consolation prize: on Jan. 18, Noah's seventh birthday, he spent the night on Fisher Island for the first time since November, using a guest bedroom — an informal arrangement that will continue indefinitely. "We live during the day like a family," Becker says. "Then I sleep in my room, and she sleeps in hers. It's very, very weird."
There are times, he says, when he and Barbara ask each other, "What did we do?" Sometimes they talk about getting back together, maybe even getting married again. "I love her," Becker says, "but that was a big hurt in December. I have made a lot of mistakes, some I will regret the rest of my life, but I would never do anything to purposely hurt my family. This woman had my heart. For her to do something like she did showed a side of her I didn't know. I'm scared. I'm basically scared of the woman."