Interview W/ “Crno-Beli Nostalgija”: Markus on the Road – How the Saxon Embraced the Black & White Ideology
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Interview w/ “Crno-Beli Nostalgija”: Markus on the road – how the Saxon embraced the black & white ideology English version of the interview which was originally published in four parts during 04/2019 on the popular Serbian football blog https://crno-bela-nostalgija.blogspot.com/ Interview: Александар Павловић Germans and Partizan FC – decades ago, that could have sounded strange, but if you scratch under the surface, you will reveal that the famous winger Josip Pirmajer, born in Vojvodina, had German origins. Later, Lothar Matthaus was the coach who led Partizan to its first Champions League group stage, while Jürgen Röber and Bernd Storck were on Partizan bench two years later. For most of the Serbs, the name of German town Zwickau doesn`t mean much. Except being the word used in crosswords. But that is just the first impression. Among the others, some prominent people were born in that town in Saxony: Robert Schumann, a famous composer and Christoph Daum, a football coach. In the past, this town was settled by Sorbs, a West Slavic minority. Further, we all who are old but passionate football lovers, still remember the local club that competed in GDR league, named BSG Sachsenring Zwickau. Last, but not least – the iconic car Trabant had been manufactured in Zwickau. Markus Stapke is the guy whom we are interviewing and he also comes from Zwickau. I was told about Markus a couple of years ago, by my friend Igor Todorovic Zgro. Just few words were enough to make me surprised and a bit shocked – is it possible that we have a Partizan supporter in Saxony? What is his connection to Partizan and Serbia, you are going to find out in this interview… - Markus, first of all, thank you for the time for this interview. Could you give us a short introduction to your town and area? And introduce yourself, of course. Well, even before getting started let me thank you, the other passionate contributors and also the dedicated readers very much for allowing me to be part of the truly awesome project “Crno- Beli Nostalgija” which I follow for a long time on a regular basis. Since I was doing some fanzine work myself a rather long time ago I know how much time and resources it requires to achieve the desired quality output. You get there every single time so nerds like me get the desperately needed retrospective input from our joint love – the mighty Partizan! I was born in 1980 into a working class family in than GDR town Lichtenstein which is situated about only 10 km outside of Zwickau towards Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt [Grad]) direction. My father worked in one of those typical big “Kombinat” for electrical drives during socialist rule while mother did her duty as accountant in a trade organization for chemical animal feed additives - yeah, I can still smell the GDR vibe when typing this words, old times. My sister and me attended local schools in town when in 1989 the people of the east began to rise up while the old world order faltered. Even I was a kid I still have very fond memories of this period: Hungarian authorities dropped the fence, some East-Germans crossed the green border to Austria, some weeks later hundreds of our people stormed west German embassy in Prague. Parents came home every day and turned on the radio to listen to station RIAS 2 (radio in American sector, aired from Berlin) while we had cake, milk and coffee in the kitchen of the house they build themselves just some years prior. Every day the same question that 1st raised The Clash roughly a decade earlier: should I stay or should I go? We stood where we belong! It wasn’t a bad choice after all, leading politican Hans-Dietrich Genscher (famous for always wearing yellow pullover, vice chancellor & foreign secretary under Helmut Kohl) one evening appeared on the balcony of the overcrowded Villa that served as Embassy in Prague and his words are eternally marked in my brain and still to this day bring me to tears: “we come to you tonight to tell you that we reached an agreement that you are allowed to go to the west! [people started screaming in the pure essence of the word joy]” For emotional and partly logical reasons I personally connect much of my life today with this specific moment because most of the things I enjoy doing most would simply not be possible on any similar way without this major change of direction for the country I was living in. Not a year later GDR was officially gone, Germany reunited, Saxony as an administrational body within the country re-instated. The first years where pretty tough for most of the people that did not leave the area to seek fortune in the west immediately. While I went through high-school the family in the meantime was seeking for new ways of income when the economic state of the industry can only be considered shit. My father tried to sell insurances for a while besides taking his first steps as skilled worker in the private sector while mother got back to her roots when joining a bank. Lots of people had no clue about capitalism, they never had lived in such a system, some western-german smartasses came over and cheated our naïve and trusty people big time, a lot of lessons from bad experiences were taught in those days. After finishing school I had the idiotic plan to join the army to study there because in theory it meant good money from day one and proper university education on top paid by the state. Good for me it never turned into reality, due to some surgeries in my childhood I was declared human waste during the selection process, haha. I instead just out of necessity to do something with my time went to join the university of applied sciences in Zwickau. Although I never really digged much of what I did there I received my engineer’s degree in electrotechnics some years later. Travelling was already a big thing during this period so I prolonged my studies to the max because it was obvious I would most likely never have again that much time to explore the world. Still working life caught me in the end so until this day I was serving in several roles within chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical and solar energy industry. Eh, it’s some regular income which feeds the self-inducted illusion of economic independence but I never felt deep satisfaction with the stuff that I’m doing, it’s just another job. About Zwickau you already mentioned some key facts with Schumann and Trabant. Those two export goods are known way beyond Saxonian borders. The city in the socialist system had about 110.000 inhabitants but that number declined a lot after reunification economic turmoil, due to the ever-aging German society in general and even while several small villages and towns surrounding the city where declared parts of it in the last 30 years. So today the headcount is about 90.000 people which makes us 4th biggest within Saxony after capital Dresden, Hipster-Boomtown Leipzig and the former “Manchester of the East” Chemnitz. Major industries included mining and special machinery production in the past, but this is not valid anymore. Biggest employer to this day is Volkswagen which heavily invested on the outskirts of the city right after reunification because there was a lot of skilled workforce, a good infrastructure and for sure some financial reward plus bonuses by the regional authorities. In comparison to other areas within the former east we are goin’ relatively strong in economic terms nowadays, a lot of suppliers for the automotive sector settled around the giant Volkswagen to be near to their beloved customer. So people involved into any of those companies have frankly spoken no problems buyin’ the bread to feed their spoiled children and enjoy a relatively high job-security which is not a standard in today’s working world of limited contracts and so on. If we take a look on the society of the city than it is clearly not that much of an over-intellectualized center despite having its own university. The majority of inhabitants are working class heroes, friendly people in general, but not surfing on the edge of the wave when it comes to accept and embrace all the ongoing heated up discussions about on how it is good or bad to change and progress as a good citizen of your country. There is a decent bunch of lefties, progressive minds and also an unneglectable right wing, separation of people along lines of political belief and income is gaining pace like in many other places all over Europe. The local politics are not very creative ones, changes are seen as danger, younger blokes tryin’ to leave their marks in the political discourse to again raise the attractivity of the city and stop the loss of human capital especially to cultural centers like Leipzig or Berlin are having a hard time. The main agenda seems to do everything to feed the needs of the typical shift worker of Volkswagen, pure mainstream, not looking what is happening to both sides of the highway. Besides this the city can rely on its intact center with a lot of historic buildings and even some remains of the medieval city wall. In contrast to our neighbor Chemnitz the core of the city which was originally founded back in 1118 was not destroyed during second world war so you can see pretty much of its historical beauty even today.