Ostfußball and Fan Culture in Unified Germany

Joakim Glaser Ostfußball and Fan Culture in Unified Germany

Fig. 14.1

Introduction

Football clubs have played and still play an important and vital identification role in Germany. Male football on the highest level, however, is to a large ex- tent a West German singularity. The picture above from Magdeburg’s stadium is a case in point. The mural painting is located beneath the terrace where the most fanatic Magdeburg fans support their side during home games. It is a tribute to the heydays of 1. FC Magdeburg, displaying the international op- ponents they met in different European cups from the late 1960’s to 1991. Thus, it’s obvious that the most successful period of Magdeburg coincides with East Germany. Since the demise of the GDR, 1. FC Magdeburg has played far away from the big stadiums of Europe and Germany.

This is only one of many examples of a new reality East German football clubs and their fans had to face after the German unification. Above all, this is a result of the transformation from the state controlled socialist football of the GDR to the market-oriented capitalist football of the Federal Republic on the one hand, and the far-reaching consequences of the merger of the two German football associations in 1990, in which the East German clubs got the worst of it on the other.1 In the 2015/16-season there was not one single club from the former GDR in the first German league, 1. Bundesliga. Admittedly, in the second league, 2. Bundesliga, there were two teams from the territory that once constituted the GDR: 1. FC Union Berlin and RB Leipzig. The latter club, however, is owned by an Austrian energy drink corporation and was established only in 2009, which means that it lacks a GDR heritage. 1. FC Union Berlin, on the other hand, is a totally different story. That the club from Köpenick in the southeast of the German capital is the most successful team from the GDR in today’s Germany is somewhat ironic. In the GDR, Union Berlin hardly ever played an important role in top football. Despite the lack of success, the club was the most popular club in East Berlin, and some of their fans were stigmatized by the authorities as troublesome dissidents. One explanation for this is that Union’s popularity was a thorn in the flesh to Stasi leader Erich Mielke, who was a staunch supporter of Berliner FC Dynamo, the local rival that was closely associated with the SED-regime.2 25 years after the German unification, the majority of the most successful teams of East Germany played in the periphery of German football, in the 3. Bundesliga or, as is the case with BFC Dynamo, in the fourth tier, Regionalliga Nordost, and in some cases even further down in the league system. Nonetheless, football in eastern Germany, or Ostfußball as it is often referred to, is an interesting topic in many aspects. Firstly, football clubs and fan culture are both rare cultural phenomena with their roots in the GDR that still have an impact on identity formation in unified Germany, which the high attendanc- es at games for example from 1. FC Magdeburg or Dynamo Dresden show.3

1 Only two teams from the GDR were invited to play in the Bundesliga for the 1991/92-season. At the same time the Bundesliga was extended with two teams for a number of seasons. See Nico Schwarze und Christoph Stamm, »Parteikontrollierte Offensive. Die poli- tische Instrumentalisierung des Fußballsports in der DDR«, in: Das Spiel mit dem Fußball. Interessen, Projektionen und Vereinnahmungen, Jürgen Mittag and Uwe Nieland (Eds.), Essen 2007. 2 Gerald Karpa, »Wiederstandsclub Union Berlin?«, in: Horch und Guck, 2012 (75). 3 In the 2015/16-season Dresden has had an average attendance of approximately 27 000 and Magdeburg 17 000, although they reside in the 3. Bundesliga. See http://www.liga3-online.de/ die-zuschauertabelle-der-3-liga/ (last accessed 1st of February 2016).