EURO2024_TravelGuide

EURO2024_TravelGuide_English

PUBLISHER The DFB Culture Foundation supports local and national projects in the areas of culture, education, science and international under standing within and relating to foot- ball. Every two years, the football culture of the World Cup or European Championship host nation is a particular focus. www.dfb-stiftungen.de EDITORIAL AND IMPLEMENTATION 11FREUNDE stands for a different kind of football journalism. It goes beyond mere match reports and standings, instead bringing its readers features and exclusive background reports of far-reaching value. Whether you are a supporter of Arminia Bielefeld, Fortuna Düsseldorf or Bayern München — the club is unimportant. It’s about the passion. 11FREUNDE looks down on the pitch from the stands and takes sides — for the fans and for the game.

Foreword 03 U EFA EURO 2024 is bringing Europe’s 24 best teams together in Germany. The eyes of millions of European fans will be squarely on the host country. No matter whether you are a fan in the stadium, a supporter at a public viewing event or a couch potato watching from home, the European Championship tournament is an exciting speed-dating event bringing to- gether cultures and clichés, people and un- forgettable moments. It is a crash course on the country and people of Germany. Our „travel guide through German football culture“ presents places, people and stories that shine a spotlight on how football is lived in this country. Journalists from the foot ball magazine 11FREUNDE have taken a closer look at amateur clubs, football museums and almost forgotten stadiums. They have met with artists, fan project workers, authors, journalists, musicians, foundation organisers and film directors in addition to discovering remote sites in this colourful football republic along with long-lost arti- facts from EURO history. City maps and regional football tours lead you through a lively and exciting football cultural land- scape away from the 10 EURO stadiums. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY IT! DFB Culture Foundation z t l u m h c S p p i l i h P : r e v o C

Contents 05 Travel itineraries What to see when you’re not at the stadium — PAGE 122 Athletic Sonnenberg How a new club in Chemnitz is standing up to right-wing extremism — PAGE 134 Glossary Women’s football How the boom got its start — PAGE 48 For the record The outsider’s view of German football — PAGE 54 Euro 1988 A look back at the last time Europe came to Germany — PAGE 72 Icke & Ducke Observations on football in reunified Germany Football sayings and — PAGE 78 Indivisibly united A visit to the Kurt Landauer Stiftung — PAGE 86 City maps DORTMUND HAMBURG GELSENKIRCHEN BERLIN DÜSSELDORF LEIPZIG COLOGNE MUNICH FRANKFURT STUTTGART P.28 P.46 P.54 P.62 P.70 P.84 P.106 P.114 P.132 P.144 what they mean — PAGE 98 The heart of football How social workers saved German football — PAGE 100 A fictional football museum Famous relics from EURO history — PAGE 108 Summer’s fairytale 2.0 Can the magic of the 2006 World Cup be revived? — PAGE 118 Top 5 The best football books, songs and films from Germany — PAGE 146 Match schedule All the groups. All the games. All the times — PAGE 150 Imprint — PAGE 155

RONALD RENG on Germany’s wonderfully difficult relationship with football Essay 13 T he countryside surrounding Kirchweidach is flat and full of f ields, but majestic alpine peaks rise on the horizon. In the last municipal elections, the centre-right Christian So- cial Union (CSU) won 78.7 percent of the vote. A brass band began playing when Harry Kane emerged from his car at the hotel Gasthof zur Post. Inside were 400 lucky souls who had received tickets for the meet-and-greet with Kane, almost all of whom were wearing the red ny- lon shirts of FC Bayern. The hefeweizen was flowing – after all, it was already 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning. „Had you ever heard of Kirchweidach be- fore?“ the moderator asked Kane, the world-famous striker from northeast London. „Um, I hadn’t, no,“ Kane responded with disarming honesty. The audi- ence roared with laughter. Once a year, FC Bayern München sends its professional players to fan clubs across the country, and The Reds from the Upper Bavarian village of Kirchweidach won the grand prize in 2024: They were sent the Bundesliga’s big- gest attraction, the 100-million-euro man from FC Bayern. They invited Kane for a game of Bier- krugschieben, a lot like curling, but played by push- ing a beer mug down a wooden track. Then, he was peppered with a bunch of questions, such as about his favourite animal. „Lion,“ said Kane, likely thinking of the Three Lions, the nickname of the English national team, only to cringe when the boos began raining down. His interpreter quickly whis- pered into his ear, telling him that the lion is also the mascot of FC Bayern’s crosstown rivals, TSV 1860 München. Kane quickly corrected himself. „Just a dog! Just a dog!“ The visit lasted two hours. When English foot- ball reporter Rob Draper from The Guardian turned up in the hotel immediately after the event for an interview with Kane, the journalist thought Illustration PHILIPP SCHULTZ

14 Travel Guide EURO 2024 he could see the relief in the football star’s body lan- guage: Finally, another Englishman! Safe ground! They warmed up by talking about cricket and Eng- land’s test match against India. „That was a bit crazy,“ Kane said later during his interview with Draper about the fan club event, and there was no doubt that he meant it in the best way possible. Wonderfully nuts. „It’s the first sort of thing I’ve done like this,“ he told Draper, despite having played professional football in England for 13 years. There, the fans are just a backdrop in the sta- diums. But in Germany, as he learned in Kirchwei- dach, they are part of the club. This is „a club owned by fans rather than a nation state or private equity,“ Draper wrote in his article. „Here you see the difference and the contrast could not be starker.“ Sometimes, an outsider has to come to remind us of who we are. The significance of football in German society, how well it continues to reconcile business and community interests – these are things we ourselves don’t often see as clearly as a visitor from England. Just recently, the bickering over a possible in- vestor in German football and the rather middling In this country of cultivated football fanaticism, the national team has become a kind of seismograph for the national mood. results produced of late by the German national team have given the impression that the sport in Germany is facing almost insurmountable difficul- ties. But a calm look behind the current commotion reveals that football in Germany has almost aston- ishingly become a phenomenon far beyond the actu- al game itself. Economically, the Bundesliga is (even without an investor) the second-strongest national football league in the world behind the Premier League, and it is also the emotional focus of hundreds of thou- sands of fans who are standing up to the dictates of turbo-capitalism. It is often the case that people of all ages and all levels of society play and watch football together, no matter what their differences might be. The 10 shows with the largest audiences in the history of German television have all been football

Essay 15 matches. The German Football Association is by far – ahead of choir groups, allotment gardener clubs or political parties – the largest collective movement in the country, with 7.3 million mem- bers. Football in Germany is a lever for cultural un- derstanding and social work. The cliché of football passion is fans throwing tomatoes at players after im- portant defeats, but I really wonder: Aren’t the things that happen in Germany even crazier? Fol- lowing Eintracht Frankfurt’s UEFA Cup victory in 2022, an orchestra called „The Lyric Storm“ staged the final match victory as an opera called „Una notte in Siviglia.“ Those who sang an Eintracht fan song at the door got in for half price. In this country of cultivated football fanati- cism, the national team has become a kind of seis- mograph for the national mood. Most will instinc- tively first think of the 2006 World Cup in Germa- ny, when a „good-humoured football nationalis“ spread across the land, as historian Kay Schiller has written. A feeling developed during that World Cup, strengthened by the enthusiastic playing style of the German team – but also, of course, political- ly promoted and instrumentalised by marketing campaigns. It was a feeling that said: We are cheerful and cool. Looking back from today’s perspective, it is clear that the decade that began in 2006 was a spe- cial one, both in terms of football and society at large. Optimism had the upper hand in Germany. Today, many have succumbed to the conviction that optimism – in football as in politics – can also lead to carelessness. Since 2019, peak viewership of Germany’s World Cup and European Championship matches has only been half as large as in the previous dec- ade. In some years, more people even tuned in to the country’s never-ending crime series „Tatort“ than to watch the national team battle it out in the Qatar World Cup. That’s not just the product of the

No matter what you might be looking for in football, you will find it in German football. That is why it is so attractive. 16 Travel Guide EURO 2024 emotional pain Team Germany has inflicted on its fans in recent years. In times of pandemic and a war in the heart of Europe, in an age when an aggressively destructive political power like the AfD is f lexing its muscles, football suddenly looks rather banal to many. But be- neath the surface, football in Germany has lost very little of its power to bring people together. All the way down to the regional leagues, clubs are consist- ently announcing new audience records. In Aachen, 27,000 fans turned up for a fourth-league match, while a clash in Meppen hosted 9,600. The feeling of belonging is perhaps no longer being acted out on the national stage, but locally, it is alive and well. I am convinced that just one or two stirring national team performances in this year’s European Champi- onships would be enough to activate the national team seismograph. If only it were so easy to order up such matches. „Football belongs to the fans,“ is one of the slo- gans used by fan clubs in Germany. I am actually of the opinion that football belongs to nobody. That is why it is so attractive. No matter what you might be looking for in football – a game to play yourself or to make money, a place to find a community, to get in- volved, to escape reality or simply to pass the time – no matter what you might be looking for, you will find it in German football. The turbo-commercialisation of the professional game, which fans frequently decry, has actually ena- bled a number of unique social projects surrounding football. It is money from the professional operation that directly or indirectly finances everything that we refer to today as „football culture.“ Thirty years ago, the even the term itself would have been seen as an impossible paradox. Culture was the exact opposite of football! Ahead of the World Cup in 1974, Karl- Heinz Vogel, the sports desk editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, apologized to his readers in ad- vance for the outrage of focusing an unusual amount

Essay 17 of attention on football during the tournament. It was, he wrote, „not an easy decision.“ Today, to take one example, Eintracht Frank- furt finances a museum in which the directors Mat- thias Thoma and Frauke König teach the history of football in addition to sensitising visitors to afflic- tions like depression. And when VfL Bochum head- ed for their summer 2023 training camp in South Tyrol, a group of youth from needy families in Bo- chum joined the professionals in the mountains. The Fan Project Bochum arranged the trip for the teen- agers. Fully 71 such projects were made possible through funding from the German Football Associa- tion and the Bundesliga. The Bochum project leader Florian Kovatsch set it up such that the teenagers would have to find their own way through the moun- tains as a way of strengthening their sense of respon- sibility. Their goal was to make it to VfL’s morning training session on the pitch in the town of Gais. And they made it – but only to the afternoon session. There are thousands of such examples, tales of how football in Germany is both a capitalist endeav- our and a charitable benefactor. And sometimes, those two worlds still collide. Such as Harry Kane’s visit to Kirchweidach. Kane, the Golden Boot win- ner in the 2018 World Cup awarded to the most pro- lific goal scorer, also had to endure a game involving the hammering of nails into a tree stump. The way he held the hammer didn’t make it look as though he was super familiar with such tools. And the nail he was supposed to pound into the stump quickly bent. As he left, Harry Kane seemed to the Guardian reporter Draper as a man who will retain fond mem- ories of Kirchweidach as a rather unique peculiarity of football in Germany. His next stop in the German outback will be quite a bit more ordinary. Together with the English national team, Harry Kane will be staying in Blankenhain, Thuringia during the 2024 European Championships. The biggest attraction • there? A golf course. RONALD RENG The award-winning journalist and author is currently writing a new book taking a detailed look at the 1974 World Cup, which took place in West Germany.

The artists SUSI BUMMS, THOMAS DEMAND and GERRIT STARCZEWSKI discussing inter- views, staging and solitude in football Roundtable 19 An important question right from the start: Are you automatically a fan of the team from the city where you were born? THOMAS DEMAND: I think so, yes. As a native of Munich, Bayern or 1860? DEMAND: Bayern München, of course. Originally, it was 1860, but not for long. They were so idiotic for a time that it simply wasn’t fun. Gerrit Starczewski, nowhere is football supported with as much passion as in the Ruhr Valley. You are a fan of VfL Bochum, right? GERRIT STARCZEWSKI: Exactly. But not by birth. I was born in Oberhausen and a fan of Bochum because my father is from Wattenscheid. The first photos I ever took as a child were in the Ostkurve fan block. That’s where I was socialized. Susi Bumms, to what team have you declared your loyalty? SUSI BUMMS: None at all. I first took the field when I was six and have been playing football ever since. I was never led into fandom like these two. I found my great love of the game through playing. And that love has remained, though I do now also enjoy watching football. The loyalty with which fans support their football club has parallels with social conservatism. Is that not the exact opposite of the constant change seen in the worlds of art and culture, where it is vital to constantly reinvent yourself and question everything? DEMAND: That’s true, but it doesn’t really transfer to football. After I had been living in Berlin for a time, I went to a Hertha match, but it didn’t really work. You feel like an opportunist when you turn your back on your own club to sign on with someone else. It’s a bit awkward. The late ﬁlm director Klaus Lemke once said that football is „galaxies away from cinema.” But don’t the best football matches also make for great theatre, an artistic production? Interview TORSTEN GROSS

20 Travel Guide EURO 2024 BUMMS: Of course it’s a production. It depends on where you stand, how you stand, if you are standing, how you take part, definitely. For me, it’s linked to the previous question: The difficulty of becoming a new fan at a more ad- vanced age is ultimately a question of fitting in to this production in the stadium. It’s tricky. I had the feeling that I would never be ade- quate for this advanced cult. STARCZEWSKI: I don’t agree with Klaus Lem- ke. I am more of the opinion that football is the best possible, real cinema. And that doesn’t just apply to the game itself. Even as a child, I found all the THOMAS DEMAND Demand is one of the most important contem- porary artists in the world. He is mostly famous for his works in which he fashions paper models of famous crime scenes or press photos. He then takes photos of the models, which are what go into the exhibition. The detailed models them- selves are destroyed. stuff surrounding football almost even more fascinat- ing. In Bochum, there is a wonderful football bar at the train station, the Hopfendolde, where the music is the worst possible schlager. I hate it, really don’t like it, but I love going to the place and just people watch- ing, because they come together for football from all layers of society. You see guys in suits at the bar talk- ing about football with welfare recipients. At the moment, there seems to be a widespread thirst for the European Championships this year to produce a similar eﬀect to the so-called „summer fairy tale” in 2006, when the World Cup was in Germany. Is the idea of football as social glue just m u a b n e h c E y m e r e J i

Roundtable 21 „I am of the opinion that football is the best possible, real cinema. And that doesn‘t just apply to the game itself.“ a myth, or does it really have the power to unite people across societal rifts and social classes? DEMAND: I understand the point, but I don’t really think that football really has such great unifying pow- er. At the end of the day, people take their attitudes with them into the stadium and know how to take advantage of the public gathering. You can’t ignore the fact that the gigantic plaza in front of the stadium in Berlin is also used by neo-Nazis to distribute their pamphlets. BUMMS: It depends on what the benchmark is for social glue. I would never, for example, visit every stadium without an escort. I would be scared. For me, that’s clearly not glue. Such a wide-eyed simplifica- tion doesn’t work. But the European Championships is of course an event that brings neighbours together. A few garden gates are indeed opened. Football is frequently expected to take a position on political or social issues. You, as artists, are also faced with such demands on a regular basis. STARCZEWSKI: I have always been in favour of keeping politics out of the stadium. But if you take a closer look, of course the stands are political. You see it, for example, in which ultra-groups are friends with each other, such as those from Bayern München and FC St. Pauli. I wish it weren’t so, but ultimately, football has become extremely political. DEMAND: Politics is the allocation of responsibilities, and thus of power. I find that rather uninteresting in the context of football. For me, this question centres around the old football ethos of decency. The defini- tion of decency changes over the decades, and it is of course different today than it was during Sepp Her- berger’s time. But without decency, I believe, it doesn’t work. That is true for how we treat each other and how we treat the opposing team, it is true for the fans, for insulting gestures in the stands, for fouls and lies, for everything. And that is something that can easily be applied to politics and to all social contexts: Treat each other decently.

22 Travel Guide EURO 2024 BUMMS: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Football must be extensively trained and meticulously prepared, but the most dazzling mo- ments are often the products of intuition and improvisation. That is something the game has in common with art: A brief moment of inspira- tion is often decisive, with lots of work coming both before and after. DEMAND: But there are differences. Artists, for exam- ple, don’t really have the herd mentality. Everyone wants to do something different than what the other guy did. The moment someone says: „That’s what art looks like these days,” you know that there’s someone just around the corner who is doing the opposite – and then, the art of tomorrow looks completely differ- ent. Yeah, football is a team sport. DEMAND: In football, there are obligatory traditions, a herd instinct, that many follow. Every few years, an iconoclast like Guardiola shows up, whose ideas everyone then tries to copy. Art is more individual. But you know what I really find artistic about foot- ball? Let’s hear it. DEMAND: How it is possible for 11 people to run around and act in coordination with each other in accordance with a set plan. We sit in front of the tele- vision and see the entire picture, but they are down there on the pitch. They can hardly see their team- mates and have to run the entire time, it is super loud and their trainer is standing on the sideline yelling something that is impossible to understand. It must be an incredibly stressful situation. Against that back- ground, it’s amazing that the game unfolds differently each time. In this situation, how important are brilliant individualists – football artists, if you will? DEMAND: There are set pieces, of course, and there is a lot that can be trained, but for individual players, each in-game situation is new. And that’s where art- „It is fasci- nating to watch how much stress is involved, on the one hand, but then where the creative spark sud- denly comes from, out of nowhere.“

SUSI BUMMS Bumms is the bassist for the punk-rock band The Screenshots, which was founded in 2018. The band’s debut album, „2 Millionen Umsatz mit einer einfachen Idee“, ended up in 45th on the German charts. For the 2021 European Champion- ships, Bumms teamed up with the band’s singer and author Thees Uhlmann for a football podcast called “Diffussball Show“. Roundtable 23 ists like Zidane come in, who suddenly have an idea that is simultaneously so absurd and so wonderful that it changes everything. Are you familiar with that wonderful film from Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, „Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait”? (everyone nods) Seventeen cameras all pointed at Zidane. Dur- ing brief breaks in the action, you can watch as he ties his shoes, how he then suddenly takes off running before then stopping, even though the ball isn’t com- ing to him. The film gives the very best impression of what it is actually like down there on the pitch, some- thing most of us are only familiar with as hobby foot- ballers. It’s fascinating to watch how much stress is involved, on the one hand, but then where the creative spark sud- denly comes from, out of nowhere. Players like Zidane can only shine as part of a well-balanced team. A group of 11 Zidanes or Cristiano Ronaldos wouldn’t work. Is that comparable to the make-up of a band, Ms. Bumms? Four Be- yoncés wouldn’t likely be much of a band. BUMMS: We at The Screenshots definitely find football metaphors to be helpful. Who runs out ahead, who provides cover, who slows things down. We think about such questions. Team spirit in a band is super important. You have to have a sense for whether l e p E s a o c N i

24 Travel Guide EURO 2024 the others are having a good or bad day – and the willingness to com- pensate for it. Still, I would immediately want to watch a band of four Beyoncés or a team of 11 Ronaldos. It sounds exciting! STARCZEWSKI: I think there are a lot of strong parallels between a band and a football team. The frontman is the star player, the captain, the one who gives the interviews, while the bassist is a bit more stable, the equivalent to a reliable defence. BUMMS: Stop! I love these images, yes, but I think they’re only ever half true. Our frontper- son, for example, cer- tainly doesn’t want to wear number 10. GERRIT STARCZEWSKI Starczewski is primarily known as a film director and producer and made a name for himself with the film „Pottoriginale“, based on life in the Ruhr Valley. Starcze- wski is also a photographer and the organiser of the Nacktionalmannschaft, a match in which the players play in the nude. I think he would most like to be sitting in the com- mentator’s booth. The professions of Mr. Demand and Mr. Starcze- wski seem rather lonely to me. Do you sometimes miss the feeling of team spirit? DEMAND: It is certainly something for people who enjoy being alone. But there is seclusion in football as well. I have always been fascinated by the seclusion of the dress- ing room; I once created a work of art on it called „Ka- bine”. Players aren’t completely alone inside, but after 45 minutes, they go into halftime and are kind of alone as a group of 11. It’s a magic place, and in the best case, they are transformed when they come back out. t a v i r P

Roundtable 25 „I think there are a lot of strong parallels between a band and a football team. The front- man is the star player, the captain, the one who gives the interviews.“ Essentially, though, dressing rooms are unglam- ourous non-places, aren’t they? DEMAND: They are unreal. Even when the team celebrates after a victory. Merkel might show up, but it’s not an accessible space. But I’m primari- ly interested in halftime, during which I imagine the dressing room to be extremely lonely. Maybe the trainer has lost the last four matches and knows that he is soon to be fired. He doesn’t like it, of course, but he wants to go out with his head held high. These are all things that we don’t know, things that the people in the dressing room must confront by themselves. Do you stay calm or do you flip out? Tuchel just broke his toe in such a situation. You are referring to Thomas Tuchel, the FC Bayern trainer, who kicked a door during his mo- tivational speech ahead of a Champions League match against Lazio Rom. The team had lost the ﬁrst of the two matches. DEMAND: Exactly. Another solitary moment in football: The few seconds before the whistle ahead of a penalty. You really don’t want to be in a player’s shoes. DEMAND: It’s pretty brutal, to be sure. In such mo- ments, the game is extremely private. Back to Zi- dane: The entire world is watching. Materazzi says something to his opponent, Zidane, about what he wants to do with his mother. Zidane loses it. Forty million people see what happens next, but they don’t understand. That, too, is a kind of solitude. Which brings me to another issue. There are incredible amounts of money involved in mod- ern-day professional football. Public interest is high, so there are more and more competitions with more and more matches. Professional foot- ballers, and really everyone who work in the system, are under an incredible amount of pres- sure. What about you? How do you deal with the pressure to perform?

26 Travel Guide EURO 2024 DEMAND: When I have an exhibition, it’s basically too late anyway, I can no longer change much. It’s proba- bly a bit different for Susi during live shows. What’s it like, Ms. Bumms? How does applause aﬀect you when you are standing on the stage with your band? Is it like a drug? BUMMS: Not for me. When I’m on stage, I am mostly paying attention to the person who isn’t clapping. The idea that you walk off the stage with a huge ego after a concert is not one that makes much sense to me. I’m sure it exists, but I’ve never experienced it. (laughs) It’s comparable to professional football: You know that you only have 10 or 15 years for your ca- reer, everything is compressed – the money, the rhythm. Everything. You are active on social media and an expert when it comes to pithy statements. It’s an artform. What do you think of the one-liners from the great foot- ball philosophers like Franz Beckenbauer or Gary Lineker? Wouldn’t their aphorisms make for won- derful modern-day tweets, or whatever they’re called these days? BUMMS: It’s wonderful! That’s probably why, in the music scene as well, there are constantly attempts to interview people right after their concerts – to recre- ate the brilliance of the on-field interview. But they’re usually never as great as they are in football, because musicians are apparently not quite as exhausted after concerts as players are after a match. We love to make fun of soundbites like Andreas Möller’s legendary: „Milan or Madrid, as long as it’s Italy!” On the other hand, Toni Polster once said: „I don’t want to be a monument. Pigeons shit on them.” That’s philosophy. BUMMS: It is. Or the famous „what was the problem” interview, which has long since become standard usage. STARCZEWSKI: That, though, really was staged. Tor- sten Knippertz dreamt it up. He is the public ad- dress announcer for Borussia Mönchengladbach „I‘m very much looking forward to Nagelsmann and his team. It seems that he has recently been conveying a kind of a vision.“

Roundtable 27 and also an actor. I also thought it was real at first. But isn’t it more interesting to stage such things nowadays anyway? At some point, I started inter- viewing normal people right after matches when their emotions were still raw. Pure gold! I find them far more interesting than interviews with play- ers, who receive years of interview training and have press spokespersons. Now, the European Championships are coming to Germany. Are you looking forward to it? STARCZEWSKI: I am really looking forward to the Eng- lish team, they’re coming to us in the Ruhr Valley and are playing in Gelsenkirchen. But I don’t think a euphoria will arise in Germany of the kind many are hoping for. The atmosphere in the stadiums has been dead for years. A number of mistakes were made, in my opinion, and fan culture deliberately quelled. DEMAND: I don’t take such a political view of it, but maybe I’m too naïve. I’m very much looking forward to Nagelsmann and his team. It seems that he has recently been conveying a kind of vision that is differ- ent from what we were hearing from the national team in the past. I’m impressed by that. Maybe it won’t ultimately work, but at least he will have tried. BUMMS: I enjoy watching football together with my friends, but because I spend a lot of time on the inter- net, I am also looking forward to the media discus- sion on all the platforms. The explanations, the lines that are drawn, the analyses – it’ll be great! We cannot avoid the question of all questions: Who is going to win the European Championship? STARCZEWSKI: Scotland. Seriously? STARCZEWSKI: Of course. DEMAND: I have an idea, but it won’t happen: Belgium. That would be great. The perennial dark horse. That would be great. We could ﬁnally get it behind us. BUMMS: I was just thinking about what it would sound like if I said Germany. So I’ll say: Denmark. •

05 04 City map 29 Dortmund 01 WESTFALEN STADIUM Home of Borussia Dortmund Strobelallee 50 44139 Dortmund 02 ROTE ERDE STADIUM Former home of BVB Strobelallee 50, 44139 Dortmund 03 ROTE ERDE BEER GARDEN A favourite among BVB fans Strobelallee 50 44139 Dortmund 04 BORSIGPLATZ SQUARE Where BVB celebrates its championships Borsigplatz 44145 Dormund 05 POMMES ROT-WEISS RESTAURANT The place where BVB was founded Oesterholzstraße 60 44145 Dortmund 06 GERMAN FOOTBALL MUSEUM Everything you need to know about German football history Platz der Deutschen Einheit 01 44137 Dortmund 07 GOURMET STÄBCHEN RESTAURANT A favourite fan meetup Mittelstraße 01, 44139 Dortmund 08 BVB WALK OF FAME A stroll through Dortmund and history Vinckeplatz 08 , 44139 Dortmund

History 31 03 A CLEAN BREAK 04 SELECTIVE HEARING It was April 3, 1971. Mönchengladbach against The clash on March 14, 1948, between 1960 Werder Bremen. Striker München and Nürnberg had Herbert Laumen got tangled actually been called off in the Werder net and by the police president due to had a front-row view of the left post snapping in two. The game was declared over, a 2:0 victory for Bremen. Afterwards, the Bundesliga switched from wood to alumi- security concerns. But the Munich team’s leadership acted as though the edict had reached them too late – to the elation of the 58,200 fans present. Capacity num posts. was 45,000. 01 FANS FOR RENT The club was broke, the team no longer licensed to play – so the fans of former second-league team Göttingen 05 offered their services in the 2003-04 season in exchange for a weekend train ticket and free beer. Queries came from countless small-town teams and from Fortuna Düsseldorf. 02 D10S IN MEPPEN God once bestowed his presence on the rural no man’s land of Emsland – in the form of one Diego Armando Maradona. El Dios, as it happens, played his very first match on the European continent in this tranquil corner of northwest Germany. In 1982, FC Barcelona was holding a training camp in the Netherlands and wanted to test itself against an amateur side, but the Catalans were afraid that a Dutch team might play too rough. So Meppen, located just across the border in Germany, jumped in to host the world-class team from Barcelona instead – includ- ing the newly transferred Maradona – for an August 2 friendly that ended 5:0 for the visitors. Afterwards, the two teams enjoyed some local sausage. ) 2 ( s e g a m I o g a m I

32 Travel Guide EURO 2024 05 HAVE A SHOT Digestif producer Günther Mast fought hard for the privilege. But in 1973, Eintracht Braunschweig became the first team ever with a sponsor logo on their kits, the Jägermeister stag. Later, a condom ad on FC Homburg’s kits caused an even bigger ruckus, with a regional court ultimately granting approval. 06 AND ... ACTION An audience of 8,000 showed up on May 1, 1910, to the KFV Platz stadium in Karlsruhe to watch the semifinal of the German championships. And no wonder: The match between Karlsruher FC Phönix and Karlsruher FV was the purest of derbies. That, however, was secondary to the fact that this day saw the first film footage of a football match ever produced. Just under two minutes of film have survived. Goal-line judges in suits can be seen in the images, along with 21 clips of action (none of the goals) and the KFV strikers Julius Hirsch and Gottfried Fuchs, the only two Jewish players ever to play for Germany’s national team. Hirsch was murdered in the Nazi concen- tration camp in Auschwitz in 1943 while Fuchs was able to flee to Canada. 07 FREE LOVE When Franco Foda was subbed in for the first of his two caps for Ger- many in the 83rd minute of a match in Brazil on December 12, 1987, a murmur went through the stadium. The reason: In Portuguese, Foda’s name means something along the lines of “gratui- tous intercourse.” 08 LOTHAR FOR LEIPZIG Why would 6,251 people show up for a city cup match? If world champion Lothar Matthäus is playing, of course. In May 2005, Matthäus took the pitch for Lokomotiv Leipzig, the hapless successor to VfB Leipzig. Lok won 1:0, and later also took home the city trophy.

History 33 09 HELP FROM THE STANDS On Pentecost weekend in 1910, the first-ever national team clash between Germany and Belgium was set to take place in Duisburg. But there was a problem: Only eight German players made the trip. The German championship final had taken place the day before, and several national-team players decided to skip the Belgium match. The solution: Local club Preussen Duisburg recruited four of its players, who were in the stands, to make their unexpected national team debuts. One of them, Peco Bauwens, would later become president of the German Football Association. The German side lost 0:3 – and it remained the last time the German national team lost a home game to Belgium – until March 2023. 10 RED FOR POUTING After being scored on in Munich in 1988, Frank- furt’s keeper Uli Stein stomped off the field in a huff. The other players waited for the ref torestart play, but the ref was wait- ing for Stein to return. He never did. So he was red-carded. quenz: Platzverweis. ) 3 ( s e g a m I o g a m I 11 LET THERE BE LIGHT You never forget the first time, it is said. And certainly not the first time under the lights. It was likely September 1, 1926, that Germany saw the inaugural football match played under artificial lighting. The cycling track in Hans Böckler Alley served as the pitch for Hannover 96 at the time and had already been outfitted with a lighting system. But on that evening, they were switched on for a bit of footie as well. The local paper wrote: “For the first time in Germany (and likely on the continent), an outdoor football match will take place in Hannover under artificial lighting.” The match pitted the Turkish national team against a selection from northern German clubs. The game, watched by 10,000 people, ended 2:2.

34 Travel Guide EURO 2024 B I N G O HEARD in Ger many Draußen nur K ännchen ( Only p ots outside) Still an inexplicable rule in some German cafés. Generally se en as an service the country is example for the ab ominable known for. Früher hätt’s das nicht ( That never use d to b e a gegeben! thing!) Usually a lie. Or an improvement . Generally reserve d for those with garden gnomes in their bitte Zurückbleiben, (Stand clear, please) Heard on train and subway platforms. D on’t b e confuse d by the “bitte”. They don’t mean it . Prost! ( Che ers!) C o m e s f ro m L a t i n , apparently, but in moments when it is s aid, nob o dy really cares. At that p oint , it’s all ab out the b e er. Typisch deutsch ( Typically German) Germans have a strange love -hate relationship with Germanness. This phrase b elongs to the hate cate gory. Und was hat das gekostet? (And how much did it cost?) Either an expression of blatant envy or a pro duct of old-fashione d, German anti- consumerism – never mind the BMW in the garage. wasteland) Servicewüste Deutschland ( Germany, a service As previously mentione d, service ain’t great in Germany. Politeness can b e fleeting. Icy glares standard. This phrase is often uttered by apologetic lo cals to visitors Das sind 40 D-Mark!!! ( That’s 40 marks!!!) The numb er 40 is unimportant . The nostalgia for the old German currency is the issue here. Some Germans haven’t fully embrace d the euro.

Bingo 35 B I N G O SEEN in Germany Socks with sandals Seen far too often. Researched far too little. Often involves white socks. A concerning phenomenon that even Germans roll their eyes at. A sausage stand Different shapes, with ketchup or mustard – or, for currywurst, “with intestine or without” – but sausages are the one thing all Germans can agree on. Someone lays out a towel Usually, a technique used by Germans marking their territory on vacation, but may also be used in the sauna, park or stadium – perhaps with a jacket or sweatshirt as an ersatz towel. „Only cash accepted” sign Allegedly to avoid bank fees associated with card payments. But actually just another way for merchants in Germany to make it difficult for customers to buy their wares. A garden gnome Invented 120 years ago in Thuringia. Now, with a population of around 25 million, they rival the number of cats and dogs in the country — added together. Someone washing their car To be sure, only around 34 percent of Germans wash their car once a month anymore – against 45 percent in England. But: They’re thorough! A sign reading Verboten! It’s a stereotype that every other word out of a German’s mouth is verboten! As with most stereotypes, though, there is some truth to it. This square will be easy to fill. DIN label Pretty much everything in Germany comes in normed sizes and shapes. It’s called DIN, and there’s even one for office chairs (DIN EN 1335). Open your eyes. They’re everywhere.

38 Travel Guide EURO 2024 The district league club SC ALEVITEN PADERBORN is unique in Germany. Over 2,000 refugees have already passed through its doors. The AfD is trying to put a stop to it, but that has only made the club stronger. E ven goalkeeping giant Oliver Kahn once tried to hit the high-tension po- werlines that cross over the pitch. But he wasn’t able to. Like the many ot- hers, both before and since, who have failed, Kahn fell victim to an optical illusion: From below, it only looks like the sagging wires are within reach – here in Hermann Löns Stadium in the north of Paderborn, the only (former) professional pitch in Germany that lies beneath powerlines. But the club that has called the place home for the last eight ye- ars is also rather unique. Currently, players from 41 dif- ferent countries play for SC Aleviten Paderborn. And that number has been even higher in the past. „It gives people prospects who would otherwise ha- ve none in this country,“ says Verani Kartum, founder and chair of the club. The wiry 54-year-old is standing in front of the clubhouse holding a cigarette in his hand and wearing a green training jacket that is at least one size too big. He has a lot to say and speaks quickly, so- metimes jumbling his words. At times, though, Kartum is perfectly clear, such as when he says: „The boat is ne- ver too full.“ Kartum founded SC Aleviten Paderborn eleven years ago. It is a club that welcomes everyone – and a place where this claim isn’t just a platitude, but a life philosophy. A place where Blacks, whites, homosexu- als, heterosexuals, people with disabilities, Kurds, Turks, Syrians, Ukrainians, Russians and Germans co- me together. The kind of club that Verani Kartum would have wanted to see back in the late 1970s when he arrived in Germany from Turkey at age seven. Back when the Germans were so foreign to him – just as foreign as his parents, who were guestworkers. He had to share a bed with his three siblings, and his pa- rents sent him to his uncle for much of his childhood. The locals in this corner of West Germany weren’t particularly pleased about the newcomers, nor were the children in his school. Kartum’s classmates called him „Cumin Turk“. Text MAX NÖLKE Fotos SOFIA BRANDES

Feature 39 Verani Kartum came to Germany from Turkey at age seven. He felt foreign in his new country – until he found a foot- ball club. Little Verani spent many evenings in tears. But then he joined SJC Hövelriege. The other players would show up to training with gym bags, training jackets and slick football cleats. Kartum would arrive carrying a plastic bag and wearing worn-out kicks he had found in a landfill. Thus began Kartum’s life straddling two worlds. At home, Turkish was spoken, but with his te- ammates, he learned German. At parties, he was usu- ally the only foreigner. „I know how these boys here feel,“ says Kartum, after 47 years in Germany. Ismail from Somalia. Thariq from Iraq. Surik from Armenia. „I know the rejection, the lack of orientation, but also how to overcome it.“ And that is why he wants to give them a place to belong. And where else but foot- ball? W here „people can’t avoid each other,“ as K artum says. „In football, poor meets rich, people with different at- titudes and sk in co- lours – and they can’t avoid coming into con- tact and speaking with each other.“ As Kartum talks, a small boy squirms impa- tiently next to him. Ah- met doesn’t want to in- terrupt, but his question simply can’t wait. „Whe- re is Mecca?“ the boy asks, looking shyly up at Verani Kartum. He con- siders brief ly and then points up at the sky. „That’s where the sun goes down. That’s where Mecca is,“ he says. Ah- met thanks him and di-

40 Travel Guide EURO 2024 sappears into the locker room. „Do you have any foot- ball cleats for me,“ another player asks. Sekou arrived just a few weeks earlier from Ghana and he doesn’t yet have all he needs. Kartum eyeballs his feet: „Size? 44?“ And before he receives an answer, he says: „You can ha- ve mine.“ „Where are the onions?“ someone calls out from the food truck behind him. Mohammad is prepa- ring for iftar. Later, when it is time to break the Rama- dan fast, everyone will get a döner. „Open your eyes. Under the sink,“ Kartum responds affably. Sometimes the questions are mundane, sometimes they are weight- ier. But Verani Kartum always has an answer. „Now, where were we?“

Feature 41 Evasive cuts, firmly struck through balls, timing for the perfect run: Players are taught none of that here. But they do learn the intricacies of German asylum procee- dings, how to prepare for immigration office appoint- ments and where to get a birth certificate. Kartum can’t do all that on his own, of course. He is surrounded by a team, most of them volunteers, who spend seven days a week on the pitch, just as he does. Among them are la- wyers who provide insight into German law and trans- lators who can help deco- de bureaucratese. His wi- fe Angela recently held a presentation in the club- house about the German health system. The blueprint: Moham- mad Mohammad fled Syria in 2015. In March, he applied for a German passport. „Everything is thanks to Verani,“ he says. Adidas? Nike? Who cares? At SV Aleviten Paderborn, stubborn allegiances don’t exist. There is also an emphasis on eliminating prejudices. Homosexual- ity is discussed openly, and three years ago, the entire club visited a synagogue, with all players required to wear a kippa, even the Mus- lim boys. Afterwards, the team wanted to travel to Israel together. There have been youth exchanges with Ukrai- ne and Poland. As part of the NesT Programme, SC Aleviten has also taken in a family from Somalia in co- operation with the Egidius Braun Foundation and the local Paderborn refugee aid agency. The family received an apartment with the rent paid in advance for the next two years. In cooperation with the Paderborn job cen- tre, the club also creates positions for the unemployed. Currently, the club has six employees. One of them is Tobias Meier. „For the first time in my life,“ he says, „I was accepted the way I am.“ The 38-year-old is autis- tic, and he has been a member of SC Aleviten Pader- born – „my family“, as he says – since 2018. He is an administrator, taking care of new registrations and de- partures. „When a new player arrives, he only has to bring along identification. That gets scanned and then I report the name to the DFB,“ Meier says, referring to the German Football Association. „Usually, the player’s

42 Travel Guide EURO 2024 Hermann Löns Stadium is the club’s home – the only pitch of a (former) profes- sional club in Germany located beneath high-tension power lines. license arrives within 10 days.“ To reduce the bureau- cratic burden, he sometimes heads over to the new member’s home with the application and a printer. There are, of course, other clubs in Germany that focus on integration. In the eastern German state of Sa- xony-Anhalt, for example, SV Blau-Weiß Grana has been promoting the integration of refugees for years. Welcome United 03 in Babelsberg, just outside of Ber- lin, fielded the first all-refugee team in 2015. „What ma- kes us unique is that we don’t look after the people. They are part of the club from the very first day,“ says Verani Kartum. But the size of SC Aleviten also makes it unique. Since its founding in 2013, more than 2,000 people have been part of the club. Currently, it has over 150 members, down from its peak of up to 700. It fields teams from the youngest children all the way up to U19. 2015 was the year of the refugee wave, during which almost 900,000 asylum seekers arrived in Germany. One of them was Mohammad Mo- hammad, who f led the war in Syria as a 12-year- old – they guy who was just looking for the oni- ons in the food truck. He arrived in Paderborn in November or December of that year, he’s no lon- ger quite sure. „Boat, train, bus, on foot, it took more than 30 days. Across the Balkan Rou- te,“ he says. Today, Mo- hammad is 21 years old

„One time, the police stopped us because they thought we were migrant smugglers.“ Feature 43 and speaks perfect German. You can only hear the ti- niest bit of accent if you listen extremely closely. His temples are freshly shaved and his beard carefully trim- med; he is wearing a light-coloured hoodie and a broad smile. Mohammad has grown into the club’s most ho- nourable position: „I am Verani’s right-hand man,“ he says. „When you’re not trying to steal my cigarettes,“ grumbles Kartum. It was January 2016 when the notorious VW cam- pervan, the SC Aleviten trademark, parked in front of Mohammad’s door for the first time. Back then, Kar- tum’s team would use the van to pick up newcomers who didn’t yet know their way to the pitch. Sometimes, there were up to 80 of them. „We would drive back and forth. By the time all the kids were there, it was getting dark and training would be over,“ says Kartum. „One time, the police stopped us because they thought we we- re migrant smugglers.“ Mohammad laughs. His bright smile would seem to support Friedrich Merz’s rather unique theories about dental care in Germany. Last year, Merz, the chair of the centre- right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), claimed that asylum applicants are taking all the dentist appo- intments away from Germans. Mohammad, though, isn’t interested in taking anything away from anybody – and he isn’t an asylum seeker anymore either. Rat- her, he is the blueprint for successful integration. Last year, he passed his journeyman’s examination for pain- ting and varnishing, and in March, he applied for Ger- man citizenship. „Even if the war in Syria comes to an end at some point, I wouldn’t go back. I am at home here in Germany,“ he says. But even success stories like Mohammad’s aren’t enough to silence all the doubts. Far from everyone is happy about what SC Aleviten Paderborn is doing. The right-wing extremist political party Alternative for Ger- many (AfD) has filed several petitions with the city to prevent the club from being allowed to play in Her- mann Löns Stadium. Each of them has thus far been re- jected. Verani Kartum has stopped trying to understand

44 Travel Guide EURO 2024 A huge collection of flags: SC Aleviten Paderborn currently has 150 members from 41 different countries. Players here don’t learn how to execute perfectly times through balls, but they do learn how to what the AfD’s problem is. He points out to the fore- court and says: „The AfD is afraid of boys like this? That’s ridiculous.“ For him, the equation is simple: If you give people who come to Germany an opportunity, they will become part of society. If you don’t, if you ig- nore them and see them only as intruders, they’ll de- fend themselves. „But the boys here are much too tired after playing football to cause any trouble.“ It‘s almost as every new attempt made by the AfD in Germany. become established to chase them off, every xenophobic slogan, every backhanded whisper in the sports committee, merely strengthens the convictions within SC Aleviten that they are do- ing the right thing. The racist blather is, of course, frightening. But even that provides food for their idealism. „Social ego- tism,“ is what Kartum calls it. „You have maybe a few weeks of fun with a new car before you get used to it. With a new house, it might be a few months. But socie- tal wealth is inexhaustible.“ Over and over again, voices have claimed that the team is hoarding cash, that it is earning money with subsidies and donations. Such ac- cusations only elicit a tired laugh from Kartum. „Finan- cially, I’m quite a poor man. I live off my 2,100-euro pension. That’s it,“ he says. That’s how he finances his life – SC Aleviten Paderborn. Verani Kartum has learned two things during the 11 years of the club’s existence. „Don’t expect any grati- tude. If you do, you’ll be disappointed.“ And: „Let go.“ Several times, boys have just stop showing up from one day to the next. In some cases, it is because they’ve been transferred to a different refugee camp, in others they ha- ve been deported. Sometimes, though, it is what Kar- tum describes as „the best thing that can happen“ – so- metimes, he says, „it’s because the boy wants to free him- self of the refugee image. Because he is now playing for a

Feature 45 different team and has left the refugee club behind.“ It’s a bit like when your own children grow up and move out. Just that nobody suffers from empty nest syndrome – sin- ce new players walk through the door every day. The team, it should be mentioned, also plays foot- ball. But the results on the pitch tend to be rather mo- dest, at least for the club’s top team. Currently, they are almost at the very bottom of the district league C2. They lost one recent match 0:14. That same day, Gi- braltar’s national team lost 0:14 to France. Verani Kartum thought it was great – to be united in failure. And anyway, even Oliver Kahn was unsuc- • cessful in Hermann Löns Stadium.

History 49 I t was a football revolution pa- cked into an unspectacular ad- ministrative decree. With just two dissenting votes in autumn 1970, the German Football As- sociation (DFB) finally allowed its member clubs to establish sections for women’s football and organise regular matches. Just 15 years earlier, the associa- tion had thoroughly rejected the idea that women could participate in structured sport under the DFB umbrella. The asso- ciation found that „this combative sport is essentially foreign to a woman’s nature“. And further: „Body and soul are inevita- bly damaged, and the display of the body violates propriety and decency.“ It was an antiquated mindset that sounded even more incongruous in 1970 than it did 15 years earlier. By then, un- sanctioned girls’ teams had already been established across Germany, and wo- men’s football was in the process of be- coming established in numerous other countries. If the DFB didn’t want to lose the women completely, it had to do so- mething. The consequence of the forced about-face, however, was a – from to- day’s perspective – bizarre catalogue of regulations. The association required that women play with a smaller ball and lighter shoes, and that the matches be shorter. Furthermore, cleats were ban- ned, as were attacks on the keeper, and the women were allowed to use their hands to ward off balls flying toward their upper bodies. The next year, the DFB even allowed women referees and trainers. With striking consequences: Within just 12 months, fully 73,000 wo- men became members of the DFB. Lo- cal and regional women’s leagues were organised in record time, with the first association champion being crowned in 1971, a team from West Berlin called Tennis Borussia. Other associations pro- duced their own champions, and the first German championship tournament was held in 1973, an event that took place thanks to the tenacity of TuS Wörrstadt, a club located near the city of Worms. The first, unofficial championship was known as the „Gold Cup“ and saw TuS Wörrstadt defeat FC Bayern 3:1. That year, though, not all associations sent a representative to the tournament, and it was only one year later that the field was complete and the final was officially re- cognised by the DFB. But as quickly as women’s football was blossoming, patriarchal structures were inhibiting its sovereign growth just as strongly, including in places where the sport was receiving support. The vangu- ard was Horst Nußbaum, better knowns as Jack White. A producer of German schlock-rock, he coached the women’s team from TeBe in the early 1970s but felt compelled to characterise training ses- sions with belittling comments like: „You have to get used to the fact that tears co- me quickly, but we have a splendid group.“ It was the kind of babble the wo- men frequently had to put up with. When Wim Thoelke welcomed the players of the unofficial women’s national team in 1970 to the sports show of public broad- caster ZDF, producers and moderators did all they could to portray them as so- me kind of bizarre circus act. Thoelke s e g a m I o g a m I

50 Travel Guide EURO 2024 compared defence on the pitch to setting the dinner table and said: „You must real- ly cover your man, free of all concerns for your household, husband and children.“ None of that could stop the boom of women’s football – which was primarily because of the sport’s courageous pio- neers. Among the most impressive perso- nalities from these early years was Anne Trabant, who won a first title with Wörr- stadt as a player before transferring to Bonner SC as a player/trainer and win- ning another championship in 1975. Two years later, she won the next title, this time wearing the shirt of SSG 09 Bergisch Gladbach. As player/trainer, she turned the club into a perennial champion, collecting title after title until 1992 and winning the DFB Cup twice. For years, the now-married Anne Tra- bant-Haarbach pushed for a German national team and ultimately – without authorisation – boarded a plane to Tai- wan with her SSG Bergisch Gladbach team to take part in the unofficial wo- men’s World Cup. An application for travel expenses of 55,000 marks was rejected by DFB functionary Horst Schmidt with the obtuse observation: „We don’t pay for friendlies.“ The wo- men refused to be put off, won the un- official world cham- pionship and recei- ved an enthusiastic welcome when they returned home. The association belated- ly provided 5,000 marks. The club did, however, receive plenty of compliments, such as one from Horst Schmidt himself: „Trabant is the Günter Netzer of women football.“ It‘s no wonder, then, that Trabant was ultimately tapped when an official women’s national team was finally esta- blished in 1982. Together with trainer Gero Bisanz, the most successful wo- men’s player of the decade was to assem- ble a team for the European Champion- ships, set to take place the next year. Tra- bant had a clear vision of what she wan- ted to achieve, so she categorically rejected a cooperation with Berti Vogts as national team trainer. She also quickly clashed with DFB trainer Karlheinz Stockhausen (not the composer), despite the fact that he had been charged with evaluating her so she could receive her trainer’s license. „It’s clear that I don’t have the best chances with him,“ she said at the time. But Anne Trabant-Haarbach refused to temper her disposition. When national team player Paul Breitner made disparaging com- ments about wo- men’s football, she responded: „I like P a u l . B u t h e shouldn’t think that everything he says is law.“ For the first women’s national team match against Switzerland on No- vember 10, 1982, Football pioneer Anne Trabant (left), wearing the shirt of Bonner SC.

History 51 Here it is: The cup for the first, official German championship for women. she took the pitch as a player and as assis- tant trainer. The DFB hadn’t ultima- tely found the fort- itude to name her trainer, as logic would have dictated, instead placing Bi- sanz by her side. The real boss, though, was Anne Trabant. „Go ahead and yell at us,“ the players told the rather soft- spoken Bisanz, but Trabant was more than happy to take on this task as well. „Even the Bundesli- ga doesn’t have an- yone more abrasive,“ one player said an- onymously. Trabant, for her part, gave up her role as player/trainer after a year because of the heavy strain – and was succeeded as co-trainer by a woman who would go on to leave her own mark on the national team and close the gap to the dominating teams from the Nordic countries and Italy. In 1985, Tina Theu- ne-Meyer became the first woman to earn a Trainer A license, though during her training sessions, she said, she was blatantly ignored by colleagues like Han- nes Bongartz and Peter Geyer. She also had to stand by and watch when partner calisthenic exercises were on the schedu- le. „It was just too idiotic for me, I couldn’t do these exercises with a man.“ But, she added: „After the first hour of ) 2 ( s e g a m I o g a m I actual football, the biases of the other participants vanis- hed.“ At the national team, Theune-Mey- er was the supportive counterbalance to Bisanz, who was ne- ver able to complete- ly rid himself of the chauvinism typical of the times. When Irmgard Stoffels on- ce indignantly asked him if he „preferred playing the more be- autiful player, or the better player,“ Bi- sanz disconcertingly replied: „The more beautiful.“ By the middle of the 1980s, however, the initial women’s football boom was ap- proaching its end. „We made some mis- takes 15 years ago,“ a deflated Trabant admitted. „We built the roof first, and now we are lacking a foundation.“ At the regional and local levels, there were no strong leagues in which the more ac- complished players out of the 60,000 wo- men and girls who were registered at the time might feel challenged. DFB functio- nary Neuberger seemed almost to welco- me the difficulties, gloating: „I warned about this early on.“ Tina Theune-Mey- er, meanwhile, did not let that get in her way. She and Gero Bisanz, with whom she ultimately managed to form a pro- ductive partnership, improved talent scouting, brought in younger players to

52 Travel Guide EURO 2024 the national team and even accepted the team’s failure to qualify for the Euro- pean Championships in 1987, a necessa- ry sacrifice for the ultimate goal of pre- paring for the 1989 European tourna- ment in Germany, a contest that would finally bring the women’s team the at- tention it deserved, at least from the me- dia. Following the team’s successful qua- lification for the final round of the tour- nament, a World Cup winner from the men’s team could no longer hold back his enthusiasm for the women’s team. „I am surprised by the technically accom- plished brand of football these girls play,“ said no less than Fritz Walter. The final tournament of the best four teams boosted the club – in which Heidi Mohr, Doris Fitschen and Silvia Neid formed the central axis – to unex- pected popularity. Even the semifinal against Italy was broadcast live by ARD, with the public station laying out 400,000 marks for the coverage. In part, as Ger- man newsmagazine Der Spiegel malici- ously wrote, „because opportunities to present German victors has become ra- re.“ The next day, the program planners were surprised to learn that the broadcast had even attracted more viewers that a Steffi Graf tennis match televised du- ring the same time slot. The country had sudden- ly been gripped by wo- men’s football fever – and during the final in Osna- brück, the stadium was overrun. Fully 23,000 fans watched the German team earn a clear 4:1 victory. A celebrat- ing Heidi Mohr became the iconic image of the victory. And trainer Gero Bisanz, who had issued rather odd directives ahe- ad of time („cute from head to toe“), felt vindicated in his painful decision not to allow his players to travel to Mainz to participate in the country’s most popular sports show. „It’s out of the question,“ he responded to the invitation. With good reason: The broadcast took place on Sa- turday evening, one day before the final, which began at 11:00 a.m. The triumph of Osnabrück was the beginning of a long period of dominance for the German women. And it also hel- ped convince DFB functionaries to give women’s football its due. Each player on the women’s national team received a le- gendary gift for their victory: a brand- new coffee service. The rest is history. Or, to be more precise, a history of success. Because the German team has won the World Cup twice since then, to go along with eight European championships. Be- cause women’s football is exciting and the Bundesliga tops in Europe. Because clubs across the country are full of young girls eager to play. More than anything, though, because German football fans have unders- tood what two boys stan- ding on the sidelines of the pitch at the Kaiserau Sport Centre realised way back in 1989. In a com- ment captured by a re- porter from Der Spiegel, they said in astonishment: “They can really play!” • Women’s football is a success. is a top league. It is exciting, and the Bundesliga s e g a m I o g a m I

On the record 57 TONIO SCHACHINGER, Austria I have frequently rewatched the red card received by Leroy Sané in the last national team match against us. I like the entire situation: How Sané is pro- voked by Phillipp Mwene. How David Alaba pulls him away. How substitute Marko Arnautović in his down jacket comes over and tries to calm him down. During the last Austrian victory before that, in 2018, there is a scene that clearly illustrates the German- Austrian relationship in football. After the match, Arnautović and Alaba film the press areas of the two teams. The Austrian area: a foldup banner, simple and plain, a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The German area: two large banners and spotlights. It is a reality that Austrians face in other areas as well, even in literature. Despi- te the rivalry though, I watch the Bun- desliga more than any other league. I especially follow the teams with a lot of Austrian players. A few years ago, for example, I quite enjoyed Hoffen- heim. Not because Hoffenheim was particularly glamorous, but because of Christoph Baumgartner and Florian Grillitsch. I feel like a lot is being done right in German football at the mo- ment. It is particularly clear in compa- rison to England, where the stadiums are full, but the atmosphere inside is dreary. Which makes sense, because only the wealthy and tourists are sit- ting in the English stadiums. They are going after international marketing at any price. But the local roots of the clubs are suffering. It’s great that in the Bundesliga, club members still have some say and that the clubs aren’t companies that can be bought and sold at the whim of some billionai- re. What I do kind of miss in German football at the moment is players like Mesut Özil: the magic, the intuitive style of play, the instinctive cleverness. The biggest talents in German football – Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz – are super, but they have completely irreproachable characters. Today, we expect 17-year-olds to do everything right in every area of their lives. I would like to see a bit more tolerance. We have to allow people to make mis- takes. Even the Germans. TONIO SCHACHINGER With his debut novel “Nicht wie ihr”, a story about a professional footballer named Ivo, the 32-year-old landed on the shortlist for the German Book Prize. In 2023, he then won the award for the novel “Echtzeitalter”.

58 Travel Guide EURO 2024 YOURI MULDER, Netherlands My father was a huge fan of Karl All- göwer. I still have clear memories of him winning the championship with Stutt- gart. Back then, we never missed the highlights on Sportschau – even if Ger- many and the Bundesliga didn’t stand in particularly good stead in the Nether- lands after our defeat in the 1974 World Cup final. We still say: If my father, Jan Mulder, had been on the team, we would have won. Despite everything, we never really felt too much of a rivalry towards the Germans. My family is from Groningen. We frequently travelled to Germany and the Germans came to us as well. When I played for Twente En- schede in 1993, I received a call from an agent who was a friend of my father’s. He said: „A German club wants you.“ But he wasn’t willing to tell me which one it was. So I said: „If it’s Wattensc- heid, then I’m not going.“Revenge came quickly: My first Bundesliga match with Schalke was against Wattenscheid. We lost 0:3. It was an away match, but the stadium was full of Schalke fans. Some of them cried after the final whistle. It was a disaster. Despite the defeat, my parents were full of enthusiasm after the match. „You’ve ended up in a special place,“ they said, largely because of the fans who cheered for us throughout the entire match. That only happens for very few clubs in the Netherlands. The play itself felt like I had ended up on a completely different planet. The tempo was much faster than in the Eredivisie. You were attacked as soon as you had the ball. Counter-pressing basically al- ready existed back then. In Holland, I frequently relied on combination play, but in Germany, I didn’t have the op- portunity. You had to run a lot more. Against Wattenscheid, I thought, this isn’t football! Like my teammate Jiří Němec always said: „Football in Germa- ny is like a marathon.“ But that’s the only way to play when you have such passionate fans. There is a completely different emotional bond to the club than there is in the Netherlands. Per- haps even a bit more at Schalke than elsewhere. But still today, you see the love that German fans have for their clubs, even in the lower leagues. Whether in Magdeburg or Kiel, the stadiums are always full. YOURI MULDER The towering striker played 176 matches for Schalke 04, winning the 1997 UEFA Cup with the club. Mulder collected nine caps with the Netherlands national team. Today, he works as a television analyst.

On the record 59 homeland, I have never let go of foot- ball. I played myself for over 10 years in women’s teams in the Florence area. My love for Germany ebbed over time and I increasingly became a Brazil fan. In addition to Italy, of course.Still, I continued to follow Germany and Ger- man football. Later, I became a journal- ist in Florence. When Giovanni Trapat- toni became trainer of Bayern Munich, I again started watching German foot- ball more often. And I followed the transfer of Mario Gomez to AC Florenz, both professionally and as a fan. My heart, of course, continued to beat for the German national team in the big tournaments, whether as a jour- nalist or as a football fan. Germany is one of those teams that you always pay close attention to in European Champi- onships and World Cups. Admittedly, not everyone in Italy is as fond of the German national team or German clubs in European Cup matches as I am. But I think that also has to do with a certain amount of fear that people in Italy have of the German teams. Who enjoys playing against Bayern or Dort- mund in the Champions League? At the same time, I think there is a huge amount of respect and appreciation for German football in Italy. SARA MEINI The Italian sports journalist works in Florence for the public broadcaster RAI. Meini commentates Serie A matches live on the radio, reports on professional clubs in Toscana and also covers the Italian women’s national team. SARA MEINI, Italien Jürgen Klinsmann, Lothar Matthäus and, especially, Andreas Brehme. It was because of the German trio at Inter Milan that I became interested in foot- ball in the first place. I was 12 years old and completely crazy about Germany. I even bought the legendary home kit for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, and I wore it proudly. And when Germany defeated Argentina in the final, I had my father drive me to Piazzale Michel- angelo in Florence, where I celebrated the World Cup title with German tour- ists and waved the German flag. My father could only look on in bewilder- ment. For him, it was a disaster to have a fan of Germany in the family. The news of the death of Adreas Brehme, who scored the winning goal in the World Cup final in Rome, took my breath away. He was my hero and will always remain an unforgettable player – both in Germany and in Italy. Since 1990, since this World Cup in my

60 Travel Guide EURO 2024 contractors. It‘s not a thing that would ever happen in English football, at least not at that level. In Germany, the club is a proper lifestyle for the people involved and I think for people in Eng- land that‘s something to look at as a model. LES MISERABLE, SINGER: I‘m not an England fan. I‘m half Irish and I sup- port Ireland, so I was always rooting against England. When I was a kid, I really liked the German team, and Oliver Kahn was my hero since I was a goalkeeper as well. Currently, I like St. Pauli. The only shirt of a German club I own is a St. Pauli shirt. Unfortu- nately, I’ve never made it to the stadi- um, but the atmosphere at German grounds is truly special. I wish there was more of that passion at our con- certs in Germany as well. Performing without an instrument is not some- thing I’m really at ease with, so I have to really feed off the crowd. And if the crowd is a bit bad, then I kind of feel every second of the gig ticking by, and I’ve had that experience in Germany once or twice. It would be fun to have a stadium-like atmosphere at our Ger- man gigs. Maybe some pyrotechnics would be good as well. (laughs) ITALIA 90 The post-punk band from London is named after the World Cup tournament where England finally managed to once again put together a strong performance. Both on and off the pitch. Just like the band, with its celebrated debut album “Living Human Treasure”. ITALIA 90, Great Britain BOBBY PORTRAIT, BASSIST: The rivalry between England and Germany is sort of invented. I don‘t think many people in Germany actually care about it. English people like to think that Ger- mans hate them as much as they hate the Germans. But from my experi- ence, they don‘t at all. For me, there was always an element of: „If you can‘t beat ‘em, join ‘em“. I’ve always liked the German team and, always sort of knowing that England were never ac- tually going to win anything, I always picked Germany as the team to sup- port in a tournament. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Mannschaft. Par- ticularly when we were a bit younger, I used to go to Germany a lot, and stud- ied a bit of German. We love visiting Berlin and I have friends there. It’s quite hard to dislike Union Berlin.I remember hearing about how the fans had basically built the stadium them- selves because the club couldn‘t afford

On the record 61 FATOU DIOME, France My little brother loved football so much that at some point, I decided I had to figure out why. So I started playing. My brother at the time was a complete fanatic for Paolo Maldini and only supported Senegal, Italy or AC Milan. A number of years ago, I received a pack of FC Bayern foot- ball cards at a conference in Germa- ny. I immediately brought them to my brother. He was extremely exci- ted, but a picture of Maldini was mo- re important to him than the photos of an entire team. For my part, I supported France or Senegal, but I also always had a soft spot for the German national team. I live in Strasbourg, and I also have a num- ber of friends in Cologne. I noted down the friendly between France and Germany at the end of March in my calendar several weeks before the match. Unfortunately, Germany beat us, but they earned the victory. I also frequently watch the Bundesliga. The style of play has become very technical and elegant. My favourite player is Manuel Neuer. Many peop- le in my birth country of Senegal also watch a lot of German football, thought through a very capitalist lens, especially the youth. They see the players as potential billionaires. It starts with admiration for their skills on the pitch, but football is quickly seen as a means toward en- richment. The youth don’t yet know that only a tiny fraction actually make it. That also happens, of course, in Europe, but those who don’t make it are able to find another job. In Senegal, many young people see professional football as an abso- lute necessity and as the only way out of the country. That is the sad part of the truth. I believe that foot- ball has a very important social func- tion. It can bring entire peoples and cultures together and people can unite through the sport. That’s why I like the idea in German football that fans still have a say in the clubs. They are thus able to spread the values of the clubs to their entire communities. I would love to see that in France, Senegal and elsewhere. FATOU DIOME The Senegalese-born writer lives in France. Her debut novel, “The Belly of the Atlantic”, looks at the relation- ship between France and Africa. Diome teaches at the universities in Strasbourg and Karlsruhe.

City map 63 Berlin 01 OLYMPIC STADIUM The home of Hertha BSC Olympischer Platz 03, 14053 Berlin 02 ALTE FÖRSTEREI Union Berlin’s stadium An der Wuhlheide 263 12555 Berlin 03 JAHN SPORTPARK Oldest continuously used football pitch in Germany Cantianstraße 24, 10437 Berlin 04 POSTSTADION Stadium used for the 1936 Olympic tournament Lehrter Str. 59 10557 Berlin 05 BIERBRUNNEN PUB Where Hertha was founded Behmstr. 03, 13357 Berlin 06 FOOTBALL PITCH AN DER PANKE Where the Boateng brothers first played Travemünder Straße 07 13357 Berlin 07 MOMMSENSTADION Home of TeBe Berlin Waldschulallee 34-42, 14055 Berlin 08 WERNER SEELENBINDER SPORTPARK Home of Tasmania Berlin Oderstraße 182, 12051 Berlin 09 SCHLOSSHOTEL GRUNEWALD Lodgings for the German national team for the 2006 World Cup Brahmsstraße 10, 14193 Berlin 02

Notes on German unity from the perspective of football. By CHRISTOPH DIECKMANN Essay 79 O n June 10, 2023, the inf luential German daily Süddeutsche Zei- tung, home to the best sports writ- ing in the country, celebrated Ger- many’s Cold War division. An an- niversary was approaching. „The German national team’s clash against Ukraine will be its 1,000th international. To honour the occasion, the SZ will be taking a stroll through German football his- tory.” The journey through yesteryear began on April 5, 1908, in Basel, with a 3:5 loss to Switzerland. It was fol- lowed by the highest peaks and deepest valleys traversed by the German team: The Miracle of Bern in 1954, the 1966 heartbreak in Wembley, the 1978 humiliation in Cordoba, the triumph in Rome in 1990. All the giants from the West German pantheon made an appearance: Fritz Walter, Helmut Rahn, Uwe Seeler, Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer, Rudi Völler, Litti and Icke. All well and good. But the list keeps going, and by the time it ex- tends to Briegel, Kaltz and Dietz, the eastern German reader begins yearning for a bit of praise for Dixie Dörner (100 caps), Peter Ducke (68), Jürgen Croy (94) or Joachim Streich (102). Accomplished German national team players from the German cities of Dresden, Jena, Zwickau and Magdeburg. But they go unmentioned. The Mu- nich-based paper ignored them — along with the fact that the 3:3 against Ukraine was not actually the Ger- man team’s 1,000th international match. It was the 1,292nd. In a refreshingly forthright outburst many years ago, Dynamo Dresden keeper Hans-Jürgen Kreis- che thundered: „The assholes over there don’t want to acknowledge our national team matches. I played in 50 of them, and they can go ahead and nullify 49 of them, but I want to keep THAT ONE. Or did they lose that match in Hamburg against the air?” The reference was to June 22, 1974: Still today, that mythical World Cup match with the Sparwasser goal is listed as „Germany against GDR.” But back then, there was no Germa- ny — there were two of them, or two halves. The entire Illustration PHILIPP SCHULTZ

80 Travel Guide EURO 2024 The German understanding of normality is the western German nor- mal. history belongs to neither, but in the football ideology of the West, „Germany” means the German Football Association, the DFB. The East German association was called DFV. It dissolved itself on November 20, 1990, because the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had become part of the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990. Some 390,000 DFV members along with 4,412 clubs was absorbed into the DFB, becoming part of the association’s new section called the Northeast German Football Federation (NOFV). Since then, the football nation has been uni- fied. But what kind of unity is it? The last top-league season in the GDR ended on May 25, 1991, eight months after the country ceased to exist. FC Hansa Rostock, a team with a long history of near misses, fi- nally broke through that year, winning both the cham- pionship and the cup. The club’s reward was a spot in the Bundesliga along with second-place finisher Dyna- mo Dresden. Six GDR top-league teams were also inte- grated into the second division, which was expanded to 24 teams. NOFV president Hans-Georg Moldenhauer, a former keeper for Magdeburg, developed a pyramid for the future of eastern German football, which envi- sioned eight eastern teams in the third division, four clubs in the second division and two in the Bundesliga. Distressingly, reality refused to conform to Moldenhau- er’s vision. In spring 2024, only three of the 30 third di- vision clubs are from the east to go with two clubs in the second division. Among the elite, only 1. FC Union Berlin is holding down the eastern fort. Football is a sport, a chamber of memories and a mirror of history all at the same time. In the first free elections in the GDR on March 18, 1990, the vast ma- jority of East Germans voted in favour of a rapid align- ment with the Federal Republic – and thus against their own history. A small, bankrupt state joined a large, prosperous nation. A bankrupt, demoralised polity be- came part of an intact society. The East needed the West, not the other way around. The West was a coher- ent construct. It hooked up the „New Länder“, as the

Essay 81 eastern states came to be called, like a powerful locomo- tive adding cars 12 to 16 to an existing train. From that point on, what used to be East Germany was a third of the country and a fifth of the population – and was ex- pected to comply with the majority and its regulations. National media are western German media. Na- tional debates are western German debates, occasional- ly garnished with a voice from the east. The German understanding of normality is the western German nor- mal. Approaches to history are made through the west- ern German lens. The West doesn’t see itself as West, just as German — in contrast to the East. The Süd- deutsche Zeitung’s jaunt through 1,000 national team matches conforms to the standard Western ignorance. And when Franz Beckenbauer passed away in January of this year, memories of the „Kaiser“ filled the paper for an entire week, up to four pages per day. When Hans-Jürgen Dörner died, the „Beckenbauer of the East” only got a small box. Javier Cáceres penned a short yet informed blurb about „Dynamo’s shining light”. Dörner had also amassed a few distinctions in the West after all, as trainer of Werder Bremen and as Berti Vogts’ assistant in unified Germany’s European Championship victory in 1996. The „DFB data centre” lists GDR national team players separate from its German statistics. In 1995, I visited Georg Buschner, who led Jena to a trio of cham- pionships as trainer before taking over leadership of the GDR national team from 1970 to 1981. I asked him: „Does it bother you that the GDR national team matches aren’t included for Germany?” He smiled knowingly: „I stick to the facts. Those matches took place.” I’ve been a Jena fan since 1965. It is a cross I’ve had to bear since I was nine. My shrine of memories in- cludes championships, cup triumphs, European Cup victories over Ajax Amsterdam, Olympique Marseille, AS Rom and Benfica Lissabon. In 1981, I was at the European Cup final against Dinamo Tbilisi in Düssel- dorf. Or, to be more precise, I was sitting in front of my television in East Berlin because my all-knowing state

The Europe- an Champion- ships will be played in eight west- ern stadiums. Such is German unity. It is the only one we have. 82 Travel Guide EURO 2024 refused to allow its citizens to travel across the anti-fas- cist protection wall. My team will always be at the top of the eternal GDR standings. As the state was disinte- grating, we qualified for the Bundesliga’s second divi- sion with the 24,200th and last (Heiko Weber in Cottbus!) goal in the history of East Germany’s top league. After three years, we were relegated, but the team stayed together and we moved back up — only to fall again in 1998. Bernd Schneider, our best player, transferred to Eintracht Frankfurt and then to Bayer Leverkusen. I watched „Schnix” in the 2002 Champi- ons League final against Real Madrid and in the World Cup final against Brazil. That year, as a star of unified Germany, he was called „the white Brazilian”. The top GDR league was the most conservative in the world. Player transfers were rare and team favour- ites usually stayed with the same club until retirement. Peter Ducke was in Jena, and he stayed there. Jürgen Croy was Zwickau’s star and Dixie Dörner was synony- mous with Dynamo Dresden — in contrast to Matthias Sammer and Ulf Kirsten after the fall of the Wall. In- deed, German reunification unleashed a slew of west- ward transfers, with even perennial champion BFC Dy- namo quickly losing Rainer Ernst, Thomas Doll and Andreas Thom. Hundreds went west and continue to do so today. The grief of the exsanguinated eastern clubs and their fans stood in contrast to the joy of the players, released from their cages. Sammer and Thom, now in Stuttgart and Leverkusen, debuted as the first easterners to play for reunified Germany’s national team — after 23 and 51 GDR caps, respectively. In Jena, Dresden and Magdeburg, fans were faced with a decision: Do I desert my club for the big stage of football’s modern era? Or do I remain faithful? Crowds of legionnaires paraded through the Saale River valley in Jena. But many refused to jump ship. The fans real- ised that the club — FC Carl Zeiss Jena — was nothing without them. The following generation was better able to digest the changing times than the surly old guard. If Meppen, Burghausen and Trier were now coming

Essay 83 through town instead of Europe’s football elite, it was merely evidence of Germany’s unity, though it still re- quired a bit of adjustment. Missing out on advancing to the third division because of losses to Plauen and Neu- gersdorf is a bitter pill to swallow. But the enthusiastic singing of the next fan generation provides succour. „You will be my club forever FC Carl Zeiss Jena / No matter where the road may lead / We will be with YOU, with YOU, with YOU!” My son also fell into the clutches of this unmatched football club at the tender age of four. It happened after a 6:0 away victory at VfL Halle 96. A Zeiss fan, drunk on pilsner and pride, lifted the bewildered child into the Halle heavens and roared: You old fighter! You were here today! You will be a Zeiss fan FOREVER! And that’s how it has turned out. Cornelius played for a smaller club in Berlin, VfB Ein- heit zu Pankow, and while his teammates all showed up in shirts from Barca, ManU and even Werder Bremen, Conny insisted on the blue-yellow-white of Zeiss, de- spite the teasing. And then, a miracle happened. Coca Cola put out a football collection, and since eastern Germany had no team in the Bundesliga, cans for the east were printed with the emblems of longstanding eastern German clubs. And thanks to a delivery error, the multinational stocked our local supermarket in Ber- lin exclusively with Jena cans – the stacks of FC Carl Zeiss glory reaching right up to the ceiling. A mar- ket-economy Marian apparition! Now, the European Championships „in your own country” are approaching. At the dreadful World Cup in Qatar, the national team was exclusively western. But that has now fundamentally changed with the return of Toni Kroos. He is a native of Greifswald, the city that produced Germany’s favourite painter Caspar David Friedrich. Kroos lived and ripened for nine months in the GDR before graduating to Germany. The Europe- an Championships will be played in eight western stadi- ums in addition to Leipzig and Berlin. Such is German unity. It is the only one we have. We are looking for- ward to what is to come. But can we bear it? CHRISTOPH DIECKMANN A winner of the Theodor Wolff Prize and the Kirsch Prize, Christoph Dieckmann spend 30 years as an editor and author for Die Zeit – as was the only eastern German in the newsroom for much of that time. His most recent book, “Woher sind wir geboren”, is an exploration of German identity.

Feature 87 The Kurt Landauer Stiftung recalls one of the most formative personalities of FC Bayern München. Its members also provide insight into the intricacies of football memory. Text & Fotos TOBIAS AHRENS W hat do statues care about the problems of today? As Georg Mooshofer walks d o w n S ä b e n e r Strasse, there is a bit of a commotion at FC Bayern – even more than normal. The state of the world-famous club can still be reliably gauged by a quick visit to the training grounds. Fans are waiting at the entrance to the underground garage for the stars to arrive, hoping to catch a glimpse of Leon Goretzka or Manuel Neuer. Children with their parents in tow, or the other way around, are excit- edly holding slips of paper and pens in their hands, collecting autographs. Fans carrying bags full of new kits pour out of the shop next door, unconcerned about the fact that for the first time since 2012, the season might not end in a champion- ship (spoiler alert: it didn’t). Georg Moo- shofer, 40, walks past the fans and through a gate on the club compound. He has other problems. Cobwebs have developed. This is the story of the Kurt Landauer Stiftung. And an answer to the question as to how memories of the past can be cultivated at one of Germany’s largest football clubs. Though that would be a bit too overwrought for the FC Bayern fans who have found here a place to get involved. „Memory, yeah, but we are al- so doing historical work,“ says Moo- shofer. „And history never ends.“ He then carefully wipes down the bronze statue standing on Säbener Straße, re- moving fine cobwebs. The statue is a likeness of Kurt Landauer, the honorary president of FC Bayern and so much more. The son of a Jewish merchant, he played keeper for the club around 1901 and went on to become president not long later, returning to the position after earning an Iron Cross in World War I. He was forced to resign when the Nazis rose to power and was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp for four weeks before fleeing the country. After World War II ended, he returned to FC Bayern and again devoted himself to the

88 Travel Guide EURO 2024 Members of the Kurt Landauer Stiftung in front of a miniature replica of the stands at the first FC Bayern football grounds. Under President Landauer’s leadership, the club won its first championship in 1932. club, negotiating with the Allies for ade- quate training grounds for the club. And then his name was almost completely forgotten – even if Landauer himself said: „FC Bayern and I simply belong to- gether; we are inseparable from each other.“ The names most people think of in connection with FC Bayern tend to be those of others: Uli Hoeneß, Franz Beck- enbauer, Paul Breitner and Oliver Kahn, perhaps. But none of them have their gaze constantly trained on the training pitch like Kurt Landauer. He is the one immortalised with a statue, thanks to the foundation that bears his name. Though that name, it turns out, „was a huge problem“, Mooshofer recalls. „Some club registration office approaches us, saying that since we weren’t managing his estate, we couldn’t use his name.“ As if any other name could have had car- ried the same weight. Everything began with Kurt Landauer, after all. Or, rather, with a careful choreography intended to remember him. On the occasion of his 125th birthday in 2009, the ultras had unfurled a banner reading: „FC Bayern was his life – nothing and nobody could

Feature 89 change that!“ It was the moment that many fans began to take a new look at the club’s past. Though even before that, a few individual club loyalists had sought to honour the former president. When Allianz Arena was opened in 2005, an emergency exit route was named for him. Since then, the FC Bayern ultra group „Schickeria München“ has been holding an anti-racism football tourna- ment where the victor receives the Kurt Landauer Cup. In 2014, the initiative re- ceived the Julius Hirsch Prize awarded by the German Football Association (DFB). The prize of 10,000 euros be- came the seed money for the foundation. Simon Müller, 42, was among those who accepted the award from the DFB. He is now standing next to Mooshofer in front of the Kurt Landauer monument and talking about how the artist made sure that the honorary president is looking at visitors as though he were welcoming each of them personally. A small slit is cut into the bench on which Landauer is sitting, right between his hand and his leg, symbolising the years when the Na- zis separated Landauer from his club. „We are continuing his legacy,“ says Müller. „We want to stand for openness. And against racism.“ Indeed, anti-racism is the primary focus of the foundation’s work. When Müller, Mooshofer and others from the foundation organise trips to Dachau or Auschwitz, that aim is immediately evi- dent. In other instances, it only develops over time. As a rule, every youth player at FC Bayern is led through Munich at least once by friends of the foundation. The Landauer memorial is only a small part of the tour. At Clemensstraße 50, in the neighbourhood of Schwabing, sand- wiched between residential buildings and parked cars, there is a plaque com- memorating the club’s first pitch. This is likely where Landauer himself would play. „The fact that we rediscovered this place was one of the most gratifying mo- ments for me,“ says Mooshofer, standing in the courtyard of a building complex where Friedrich Wamsler, a stove and oven manufacturer, once had the first pitch established. He then points to a spot between two terraces where the dressing rooms are thought to have once stood. Mooshofer and friends dug through archives before finally piecing together the puzzle. „We were sure we would be successful. The grounds hadn’t disappeared thousands of years ago. One hundred at the most.“ Uli Hoeneß even came by when the plaque was installed. Hoeneß himself is also now an hon- orary president of the club in addition to being a supporter of the foundation – despite the fact that most of the founda- tion’s members come from the active fan scene. Or perhaps for that very reason? „Through the foundation, we have es- tablished contacts with FC Bayern staff on a completely different level,“ says Christian Kröll, 39. Like Mooshofer and Müller, Kröll also has a long history as an FC Bayern fan. When he began regu- larly attending FC Bayern matches at Olympic Stadium in the 1990s, the fan curve was permeated with right-wing sympathies, a situation that only began shifting as the 20th century gave way to

90 Travel Guide EURO 2024 the 21st. In some cases, the battle for the political soul of Bayern Munich fandom was waged with fists. But the foundation helped disprove widespread stereotypes of hard-corps fans as violent thugs. „People at FC Bayern quickly realised that they could depend on us and that we were sorting things out. And that the work of the Kurt Landauer Stiftung was working.“ How, though, is well-meaning foundation work, how are anti-racism initiatives compatible with a club that signs marketing deals with Qatar Air- ways and is a key player in the mecha- nisms of international football? Are they not concerned about being used as a fig leaf? Mooshofer thinks for a moment and looks down at his sweatshirt, embla- zoned with the FC Bayern emblem. „You have to be able to persevere,“ he says. Indeed, that is one reason why the foundation maintains financial inde- pendence from the club – an explana- tion for the incomprehension they some- times encounter on the search for dona- tions. Some of their projects, after all, could easily be paid for out of Bayern Munich’s petty cash drawer. But the foundation values its independence. And anyway, the work of the Kurt Landauer Stiftung often focuses on the trees rather than the forest. On Leop- oldstraße, in the shadow of the hotel complex where out-of-town teams like to stay ahead of their matches against FC Bayern, there is a miniature replica of the stands from the first stadium. Using a toothbrush, Mooshofer scrubs the alder pollen from the tiny steps and talks about what the foundation works on – and what it doesn’t. Because even though the story of Kurt Landauer cannot be told often enough, it is ultimately finite – and the foundation needs new projects to work on. „FC Bayern is multifaceted. Even if it is just the woman who cleans the trophies.“ He means that literally: Maria Meissner was involved in the founding of FC Bayern’s first women’s team, later becoming the first female ref- eree and, still later, took care of polishing the club’s collection of silver trophies. „And because Ms. Meissner has no de- scendants, we take care of maintaining her grave.“ Indeed, it is difficult not to get the impression that every corner of the city of Munich has some sort of con- nection to FC Bayern – which also makes it difficult to gain a clear under- standing of what, exactly, the Kurt Landauer Stiftung does. Are birthday wishes for a Bayern legend on social me- dia something that the foundation should take care of? What about new paint for the walls in the youth team dressing room where the club’s historic logos are proudly presented? Indeed, it seems that the members of the Kurt Landauer Stiftung really only agree on one thing: That they would never do anything to help their crosstown rivals from 1860 München. As is often the case when foundation volunteers take young players on a tour of Munich, this outing also ends up at Allianz Arena. Here, where even after 20 years of existence, the stadi- um still looks a bit like a forgotten space- ship plopped down in the middle of a field, is where one of the club’s all-time greats is to be found. The monument to

Feature 91 Gerd Müller directly in front of the arena is huge, an impressive sight for everyone who walks past. For many in the founda- tion, the presentation of the figurehead in front of the stadium was an incompara- ble experience. „It was the greatest mo- ment,“ says Mooshofer, „because the me- dia interest was so great. Not even Bayer- ische Runkfunk reported when we un- veiled Kurt Landauer,“ he says, referring to the public broadcaster. They have to focus on popular issues in order to impart the core values of the foundation. „We are always facing the question: How do we escape our bubble?“ The Kurt Landauer Stiftung should not become an end in itself. As Mooshofer, Müller and Kröll look up to the head of the statue and beyond to the gathering dusk, other Alliance Arena visitors join them around the monument. Often, they say, older fans stop and say: „Yeah, that’s what he was like, Gerd Müller. That’s how I re- member him.“ The children stand next to them and look up in wonder. After all, • history never ends. The Gerd Müller statue presents the legend in a celebratory pose – which wasn’t uncommon for him. The FC Bayern insignia between 1965 and 1970. Today, it embellishes a youth team dressing room.

98 Travel Guide EURO 2024 How to speak Fußball Illustration PHILIPP SCHULTZ German for REAL FANS Ab•stau•ben [ˈapˌʃtaʊ̯bən] English: To clean up, though in this case, cleanliness is in the eye of the attack. Often, it involves a player being in the right place at the right time. Ab•tas•ten [ˈapˌtastən] English: Feeling your way forward. Describes aimless midfield passing with no obvious desire to score. Frequently the product of outsized fear of failure. Den Kas•ten sau•ber hal•ten [deːn ˈkastn ˈzaʊ̯bɐ ˈhaltən] English: Keeping the box clean. The „box“ here refers to the goal. And the only impurity in question is the ball. Den län•ge•ren A•tem ha•ben [deːn ˈlɛŋgərən ˈʔaːtəm ˈhabən] English: Having the longer breath. Makes no sense, right? It means to have patience. Leading to a win. Den Ball aus dem Netz fi•schen [deːn bal aʊ̯s deːm nɛts ˈfɪʃən] English: Fish the ball out of the net. What keepers have to do if their dives come up empty.

Glossary 99 Pil•le [ˈpɪlə] English: Pill. Slang for ball. The thing that always goes in the goal when a German takes a penalty kick. Ru•del•bil•dung [ˈʁuːdəlˌbɪldʊŋ] English: Forming a crowd. That moment when players gather to express their displeasure through intimidation and aggres- sive ego projection. Usually an expression of fragile masculinity. Ziel•was•ser [ˈtsiːlvasɐ] English: Target water. Those who miss shots, especially penalties, should be drinking more of it. Not usually availa- ble at the corner store. Den Raum eng ma•chen [deːn raʊm ˈɛŋ ˈmaxən] English: Ve make ze room narrow, ja? A defensive concept that involves crowding opposing attackers and cutting off all escape. Di•ri•gie•ren [dɪrɪɡiˈreːʁən],, English: conduct, as in an orchestra 1. (on attack) Controlling the match with lots of gesturing and passing. As the saying goes, the better you dirigieren, the less you have to run.‚ 2. (on defence) Telling the other defenders what to do and where to go, particularly when building a wall for set pieces. Screaming is the preferred technique. Ei•nen aus•stei•gen las•sen [ˈaɪ̯nən ˈaʊ̯sˌʃtaɪ̯ɡən ˈlasən] English: No idea. Basically means faking the boots off the opposing defender and making them look like a complete idiot. Often referred to as an ankle breaker. Geld schießt kei•ne To•re [ɡɛlt ˈʃiːst ˈkaɪ̯nə ˈtoːʁə] English: Money doesn’t score goals. A saying from sim- pler times. No longer makes much sense. Gut ge•staf•felt ste•hen [ɡuːt ɡəˈʃtafəlt ˈʃteːən] English: Standing solid. A reference to a well- structured defence. Only used when said defence is, well, on the defensive. Ins Tor na•geln [ɪns toːɐ̯ ˈnaːɡl̩n] English: Nail it to the goal. The term generally applies to those unex- pectedly wondrous strikes that make TV commen- tators lose their s*** in excitement.

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Feature 101 German fan culture is frequently the envy of football supporters the world over. Because here, they are much, much more than just paying customers. Text ANDREAS BOCK T he end is nigh. That, at least, is the claim made by football pessimists. They say the commer- cial pressures on foot- ball have become too great. They argue that there are too many competitions, matches around the clock on countless pay-TV stations. And they point out that tournaments are now being hosted by autocratic countries. Not to mention the astronomical prices for tickets and mer- chandise. But when it comes to football in Germany, such doom and gloom is misplaced – because in Germany, the game is more popular than it has ever been. The numbers: With an average of 40,000 fans per match, the Bundesliga has the highest average in the world. In Europe, Borussia Dortmund (81,287) and FC Bayern (75,000) are in first and second place respectively, with stadium occupancies of close to 100 percent. Germany’s second league is also leading the way, drawing an average of 28,000 fans to the stadium, more than the top league in France (27,000). Second- league club Schalke draws an average of over 61,000 fans, the 11th most in Euro- pe, followed in 16th by Hamburger SV. There are a handful of logical explanati- ons for this boom: the moderate ticket prices in Germany, the atmosphere in the stadiums, the fact that fans have a say in the clubs, standing room areas. They are developments and achieve- ments that are not necessarily self-evi- dent. Rather, they are partly a product of tireless social workers who developed a vision 35 years ago. They called it: „Culture instead of cudgels“. One of these fan pioneers was Thomas Schneider, who worked for a fan project in Hamburg in the 1980s and lat- er helped develop the Fan Project Coor- dination Centre (KOS) at the Deutsche Sportjugend, an association that pro- motes youth sports within the German Olympic Sports Confederation. Today, Schneider is in charge of fan affairs for Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL). „The Eu- ropean Championships in 2008 was the first attempt to approach football fans differently, to take them seriously,“ he says. „The tournament initiated a para- digm shift, and at some point, we had our foot in the door. Over the years, we ended up taking part in the important conferences. And the functionaries real- ised that we had experience when it s l l e W n a i t s a b e S

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102 Travel Guide EURO 2024 in Germany, they wanted to know from tournament organisers: „What are you actually offering the fans? What can they do away from the stadium?“ Neither the organising committee nor the host cities had any good answers. So the fan work- ers took on the task themselves. Much of it was rather makeshift and rudimentary. They set out informational brochures on folding tables with information about good bars, affordable lodging and free- time activities in the city. At Maschsee, a lake in Hannover, they set up a campsite where 500 people from Ireland camped peacefully together with 2,000 Danes. The fact that standing areas still exist in German stadiums is largely thanks to the active fan scene. comes to fans.“ In the years leading up to that tournament, many places were gripped by a mixture of helplessness and fear. In 1982, Werder fan Adrian Malei- ka was killed by HSV hooligans. In 1985, 39 people lost their lives during rioting in Heysel Stadium in Brussels. Then there was the rampant racism in the stadiums, the monkey noises, the banned Reich- skriegsflagge waved by right-wing ex- tremists, the organised neo-Nazi sections in the stands. Not only was little known about football fans, but for most func- tionaries, politicians and media outlets, they were the enemy. „When the hooli- gans show up, it’s time to pull out the cudgel,“ said Hermann Neuberger, who was president of the German Football Association at the time. Even by then, the first fan projects had been started – in places like Bre- men, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Han- nover. Those who worked for the pro- jects, whether they were sociologists, ed- ucators or social workers, referred to the stadiums as „the largest youth centres in the republic“. They saw football as a so- cio-cultural phenomenon with societal impact. But they didn’t have a lobby. „We were seen as crazy leftists,“ says Schneider. In 1984, when they came to- gether for a large meeting with execu- tives from Bundesliga clubs, Uli Hoeneß from Bayern München pronounced: „You’re just unemployed social workers who are trying to set up a job at the ex- pense of the clubs!“ But Schneider and the others were asking the right questions. For example, ahead of the European Championships s e g a m I o g a m I

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Feature 103 There was no money for anything more than that. Sociologist Dieter Bott, who was supervisor to the first fan workers at the time, also wrote a flippant invitation to the English: „Bring your trash bands with you and we’ll hold a festival.“ To- day, he says: „We intervened against Neuberger’s police spirit with a culture of welcoming.“ Essentially, it was the kind of overt hospitality that would char- acterise the World Cup in Germany 18 years later. Still today, the fan workers accom- pany German fans to the World Cup and European Championship tourna- ments. They set up a mobile fan mis- sions at the sites of Germany’s matches and produce their own fanzine for matchdays, called Helmut. The motto then as now: „Fans who don’t have any problems don’t cause any problems.“ Back in 1988, all of that was just be- ing developed. And violence was still omnipresent. In Hamburg and Düssel- dorf, hooligans battled it out with the police on the streets. In its story about the riot in Hamburg, the left-leaning Berlin daily taz wrote: „Some of the blame can be pinned on the city-state government. Under public pressure and just before the European Champion- ships got started, the fan project was funded with a scant 25,000 marks.“ Pressure on German football continued to grow, because the situation grew even worse in the ensuing years, particularly in league football. In 1990, Mike Polley, a fan of BFC Dynamo, was killed by shots fired by a police officer. In Decem- ber 1990, Bundesliga professionals An- thony Yeboah, Anthony Baffoe and Sou- leyman Sané wrote an open letter in which they attracted attention to the racism in the stadiums. „We don’t want to be fair game!“ In March 1991, the UEFA Cup match between Dynamo Dresden and Roter Stern Belgrade was suspended due to rioting. International associations sought to address the problem with a firm hand. They considered banning German clubs from the competitions for five years and demanded that standing areas be elimi- nated from the stadiums, as they were in England. Horst R. Schmidt, the general secretary of the German Football Associ- ation (DFB) was a fan of the law-and-or- der approach. „Over time, we’ll have to get the audience used to sitting down,“ he said. The fans, though, had other ide- as. They had become better networked over time and they had become involved in nationwide fan initiatives, fan pro- jects, fan alliances and fan shops that were not linked directly to a single club. They published fanzines and opened up an entirely new sector of work in the football industry. And in late November 1994, they began fighting for the surviv- al of the standing sections. The stadiums in Germany would perhaps look a lot different today if one of those new alliances, the Association of An- tifascist Fan Clubs and Fan Initiatives (BAFF), hadn’t organised a demonstration in front of DFB headquarters. Hundreds of fans from every corner of Germany travelled to Frankfurt for the occasion. Even hostile groups, such as fans of FC St. Pauli and HSV supporters, stood side-by-

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104 Travel Guide EURO 2024 side and chanted: „Sitting is for asses!“ It was a tough fight, as can be deduced from the rather head-scratching compar- isons that came from association func- tionaries. UEFA General Secretary Ger- hard Aigner, for example, said: „Nobody would come up with the idea of demand- ing the survival of standing areas for cin- emas or theatres.“ An additional impor- tant actor in the fight to preserve stand- ing areas was the Fan Project Coordina- tion Centre (KOS), which was likewise founded in the early 1990s and continues today to provide support for ongoing fan projects at various locations and to assist in the founding of new ones. Some refer to KOS as „football’s social conscience“. It receives funding in equal parts from the national associations DFB and DFL and from the German Ministry for Fami- ly Affairs and Youth. At the demonstra- tion held at DFB headquarters, they also moderated the discussion between fans and functionaries. Michael Gabriel, who is now the head of KOS, was there. „We argued that stadiums that only had seat- ing would damage the societal roots of the sport over the long term. That a lot of people would no longer be able to afford tickets and that the atmosphere would suffer as a result,“ he says. „I still find it hard to believe that the DFB ultimately agreed to this line of argumentation.“ It was the first milestone for those working on German fan culture – the „crazy leftists“. And it demonstrated to fans across the country that it was worth it to take up the fight – both in one’s own club and together with other clubs. In the coming decades, they began protes- ting for things like cheaper ticket prices and the retention of the „50+1 rule“, which requires that club members retain majority ownership and acts as a hurdle to investor takeovers or unpopular spon- sors on team kits (Qatar Airways). The protests frequently found success, though in some instances, conflict persisted. The discussions over racism in football, for example, were interminable. Even into the 1990s, the DFB was of the opinion that neo-Nazis were a societal problem and not a football issue. Today, says KOS leader Gabriel, the DFB is extre- mely active and credible in the fight against racism, sexism and homophobia, particularly by comparison with other associations in Europe. Indeed, nowhere else in Europe are football fans as organised as they are in Germany. Not in Italy, not in England, not in France. „Fans from across Europe are fascinated by fan culture in Germa- ny. The fact that it has developed in such a multifaceted and colourful manner is also thanks to fan projects together with KOS and the fan commissioners at the clubs,“ says Andreas Rettig, a senior functionary at DFB. Gabriel says the ad- miration from abroad is especially appar- ent ahead of application phases for large tournaments. That is when the national associations realise that they have to offer something to the fans. „They come to us and ask: How did you get it to work in Germany? What is social fan work?“ In most cases, interest in the issue quickly evaporates once the application has been submitted. Only Switzerland and Poland are home to isolated fan projects. In

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Feature 105 many European leagues, fans are almost exclusively seen as paying customers. In the Premier League, the stadiums are al- so full, but tickets even for mid-level clubs often cost more than 100 pounds. The end isn’t just nigh, it has long since ar- rived, at least for the many fans who can no longer afford such prices. In late March 2024, numerous peo- ple from football, politics and culture met at the „House of German Sports“ in Frankfurt. It was the beginning of the fan support programme „Fans Wel- come“ for the European Championships in Germany, which will be implemented by KOS. Along with DFB media direc- tor Steffen Simon and Frankfurt Mayor Mike Josef, German Interior Minister Nancy Faser, whose portfolio also in- cludes sports, was on hand. During the event, Faser said something that from today’s perspective seems completely self-evident: „I am very pleased that KOS, with its years of experience, is taking over the organisation of the fan programme. The tournament will be a festival of fan culture, and KOS makes an important contribution to our cul- ture of welcoming.“ It is a sentiment that says a lot about the acceptance and appreciation of fan workers today – and one that back then, when they started working with fans, no politician would • ever have uttered. Halfway affordable tickets and an excellent atmosphere: German football has proven successful off the pitch as well. s l l e W n a i t s a b e S

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City map 115 Munich 01 ALLIANZ ARENA Home of FC Bayern Werner-Heisenberg-Allee 25, 80939 München 02 STADIUM ON GRÜNWALDER STRASSE Home of TSV 1860 Grünwalder Str. 02–04, 81547 München 03 THE GIESING QUARTER The neighbourhood of the Lions Giesing, 81539 München 04 THERESIENWIESE Birthplace of football in Munich St. Paul-Strasse 80336 München 05 CITY HALL BALCONY Where FC Bayern celebrates its championships Marienplatz 8, 80331 München 06 ENGLISH GARDEN A favourite place for hobby footballers Englischer Garten, 80538 München 07 HIRSCHGARTEN The biggest beer garden in Bavaria Hirschgarten 01, 80639 München 08 STADION AN DER SCHLEISSHEIMERSTRASSE The city’s best football pub Schleißheimer Str. 82, 80797 München

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In 2006, foot- ball showed what it can do, bringing togeth- er an insecure country full of self-doubt. Can history repeat itself? An Essay by PHILIPP KÖSTER Essay 117 E ven the weather played along. On Ju- ne 6, 2006, the forecast called for thick clouds and sleet, but just three days later, it was radically different: “light clouds, clear!” With the result that on the afternoon of June 9, a bright sun shined down on the stadium in Munich for the opening match of the World Cup, pitting Germa- ny against Costa Rica. It was the beginning of four weeks that would change Germany. In the light and warmth of an excep- tional summer, guests from around the world experi- enced a Germany that didn’t at all reflect the stubborn clichés so often repeated about this country in Central Europe. Sullen, cool, joyless: such were the expectations many had of the World Cup hosts. Instead, they found enthusiastic, accommodating and attentive hosts. At public viewing sites and city squares across the country, locals and foreign guests celebrated one football fete af- ter the next – and at the end, the hosts were so friendly that they allowed the Italians and the French to decide the final between them. The pinnacle of hospitality. All those who consciously experienced that World Cup watched in amazement as the country rapidly changed. On the morning the World Cup got started, I was still in the newsroom of the Berlin daily Der Tagess- piegel putting the finishing touches on a football supple- ment the paper published jointly with the magazine 11 FREUNDE. That evening, I had plans to attend the second match in Germany’s group between Poland and Ecuador, to be played in Gelsenkirchen – and I started growing increasingly nervous as time wore on, fearing that the notorious traffic jam on the way to the station might cause me to miss my train. A Tagesspiegel report- er sitting next to me, who was also heading to Gelsen- kirchen for the match, merely laughed, called a taxi and brought me along. On the trip through a new Germany. It was a journey that began with the taxi foregoing the arduous detour around Berlin’s Tiergarten in favour of the recently completed and completely empty tunnel Illustration PHILIPP SCHULTZ

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118 Travel Guide EURO 2024 People have grown mistrustful – of each other, of their bank ac- counts, of the media. beneath the park, arriving just a few minutes later at Berlin’s sparkling new central station, likewise recently inaugurated with no shortage of pomp. I regarded this colossus of steel and concrete in amazement, with its maze of escalators, tracks and elevators rising up through glass tubes. The largest crossing station in Eu- rope had suddenly become the symbol of a country that had – after years of stasis and fear of change – finally taken its first steps into modernity. As the 21st century got started, Germany was hav- ing trouble coming to terms with the great disruptions of globalisation and digitisation even as it was losing its faith in the promises of eternal prosperity, social stabili- ty and secure pensions. On top of that came the burst- ing of the dotcom bubble and the smoking ruins of the Word Trade Centre. Germany had lost its confidence. And when the World Cup was awarded to Germany on July 6 in Zurich, the country invested more energy in outrage over the phony bribery attempts staged by the satire magazine Titanic than in joy at having been se- lected to host the tournament. Germany was a country that didn’t think it could do anything – including on the football pitch. Until that first day of the World Cup, the day I saw Berlin’s new central station. I could al- ready hear the songs of the Polish fans from the tracks way overhead, waiting for their onward train to western Germany after having journeyed in on special fan trains from Warsaw, Krakow and Poznań. The singing only quieted down once we arrived in Gelsenkirchen a few hours later. Indeed, we were left speechless. All the doubts seemed to have vanished; on the streets to the stadium, there was hardly a single window that didn’t have a flag of some sort hanging from it, with the black- red-gold of Germany joined by the Polish, Italian and French banners. Germany was suddenly in football fe- ver and during these four weeks, the country embraced any and everyone who wanted to be a part of it. There were so many images that burned themselves into the country’s collective memory: crowds of people gath- ered for outdoor watch parties; hundreds of thousands

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Essay 119 of Swedes in Berlin, even though only 40,000 of them actually had tickets for the group-stage match against Paraguay; partying fans from the Netherlands, Eng- land, Italy. And so much more. Even as the country had long been accustomed to viewing itself with a cer- tain sardonic – or nauseated – distance, the “Summer’s Fairytale”, as Sönke Wortmann would later dub it, was the opposite of self-disparaging satire. Sociologists may have later shown that daily attacks on migrants actually ticked upward during the summer of football euphoria, and cabaret artist Fritz Eckenga may have poked fun at Germany’s newly found patriotism. But in the popular consciousness, Germany had finally shown itself – 16 years after reunification – to be a unified, cheerful and friendly country, joined in celebration over goals by Klose and Neuville. When these wonderful summer days are now re- called today, with the European Championships fast ap- proaching, it is not merely for the joy of sharing a pleas- ant anecdote, but because of widespread hopes that his- tory might repeat itself. That a major football tourna- ment might once again unite this country. Because Germany has once again begun doubting itself and its strengths. There has been far too much strife in recent years – over migration, over vaccinations, over eastern and western viewpoints, over the war in Ukraine. Peo- ple have grown mistrustful – of each other, of their bank accounts, of the media. And they are wondering if the playing field is still level. So much of what has held peo- ple together and created a sense of community has weakened. The village associations and clubs. The church congregations. Town pub culture. The only so- cial glue remaining for a diverging society is football. We may all be fighting over religion, global warming and corona masks, but we come together to support Borussia, Bayern or Eintracht. For many years, the na- tional team also brought the people of Germany togeth- er. When Mario Götze blasted home the World Cup-winning goal in Maracanã Stadium in 2014 and Jogi Löw in his blue short-sleeved shirt embraced cap-

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What takes place down on the grass is not the most important aspect of this tournament. Rather it is the peaceful, enthusiastic encounters between people and peoples. 120 Travel Guide EURO 2024 tain Philipp Lahm, all of Germany – east and west, north and south – celebrated together. Nobody could know at the time that the world champions would quickly lose both composure and competence. That the recently crowned national hero Löw would spend the next several years shaking his head in disappointment. That the tournament in Qatar would mark a new low point for German international football – both on the pitch and because it seemed that the team wasn’t even speaking the same language. But wasn’t that also true on the eve of the 2006 World Cup? Didn’t it look like the team wasn’t prepared for the big tournament? Weren’t the German fans scep- tical of a group that looked to be a team in name only? In 2006, it was the last-minute goal by Oliver Neuville in the second group-stage match against Poland that won over the audience’s hearts. All those who were lucky enough to secure a ticket for that match in Dort- mund’s Westfalenstadion describe the cathartic roar of the 75,000 fans in attendance as the loudest they have ever heard in a German football stadium. This year’s manifestation of the national team has already managed to cement that bond with Germany’s football volk. When Die Mannschaft beat the Nether- lands in Frankfurt at the end of March, fans weren’t just treated to the new goal anthem (“Major Tom”) they had petitioned for, they also saw a team that looked to have shed all of its apprehensiveness as it tiki-takaed its way through the Dutch defence. But even in 2006, a daz- zling display of football from the German team would not have been enough to produce the electrifying at- mosphere that found its appropriate climax on a warm summer’s evening in the sold-out Olympic Stadium in Berlin. It was four weeks during which football showed its immense power. And couldn’t it do the same again this year? Couldn’t it be the case that the Portuguese in their team quarters in Harsewinkel, the Italians in Iser- lohn and the Serbians in Augsburg discover a Germany that manifests cohesion and joie de vivre as it welcomes the players and their supporters with open arms in yet

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Essay 121 another demonstration that football can unite people across borders? That, after all, is the grand promise of football, despite the ever more sophisticated commercial exploitation, the bloated ticket prices and the multi-mil- lion-euro salaries. I still remember how wonderfully it worked back in 2006. How Argentinians and Mexicans embraced in Leipzig, how Poles and Ecuadorians frat- ernised in Gelsenkirchen – and how the French and the Italians joined together to hold up a golden cup made of paper mâché for the photographers. That was before the final in Berlin, which was branded into football’s collective memory because the French football legend Zinédine Zidane first blasted in a penalty before then earning himself a red card by head- butting his Italian adversary Marco Materazzi. I have even clearer memories, though, of being jammed into the press section, laptop balanced on my knees, as an Italian reporter to my right screamed into the micro- phone of a Roman news broadcaster for 130 minutes without once stopping to breathe. While a French re- porter to my right, for his part, conveyed the action to the audience of a French radio station. And yet no mat- ter how antagonistic and agitated the two sounded, no matter how desperately they yearned for all kinds of ca- lamities to befall their opponents, it all vanished once the final whistle sounded. Almost as though I wasn’t sit- ting between them, the two reporters stretched out their hands to one another above my laptop. Both of them understood what a great gift it had been to watch foot- ball in all its drama, enmity and beauty. Such moments, in which the sport demonstrates its greatness, will be produced by the European Champi- onships in Germany as well. But these moments will on- ly really be experienced and remembered by those who understand that what takes place down on the grass is not the most important aspect of this tournament. Rather it is the peaceful, enthusiastic encounters be- tween people and peoples. Just as in 2006, as I made my way with Polish fans through Gelsenkirchen and • through a sea of flags. PHILIPP KÖSTER The co-founder, mana- ging director and editor-in-chief of the football magazine 11 FREUNDE knows that there is more to the game than match results. The southern German is a fan of the third-division club Arminia Bielefeld.

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124 Travel Guide EURO 2024 North From the MUSEUM to the CRADLE 01 SPRINGE FOOTBALL MUSEUM For decades, football fan Peter Saloga collected anything and everything he stumbled across: pennants, shirts, scarves, books, magazines, this and that. Since 2004, the collection has been stored in the attic of the „Red School” in the tranquil town of Springe, lower saxony. Legend has it that the opening of the museum was the first and only time in his life that Salo- ga deigned to put on a suit. Still, he was a bit ambivalent about the form his creation had taken: It seemed too orderly. That, though, is an extremely subjective take. All those who find their way to the town just south of Hannover can expect a colourful assortment with a slight pro-Hannover 96 bent and, something of a surprise, the history of East German football. And the place still clear- ly carries Saloga’s signa- ture after all: The collec- tor’s original basement door is also to be found in the present-day foot- ball museum. Hinter der Burg 1, 31832 Springe 02 CAHN VON SEELEN STADIUM It may at first seem rath- er strange that the town of Bad Gandersheim, with its population of just 9,800 people, has a stadium — never even halfway full — with a capacity of 4,000 fans. But the overgrown and sometimes diffi- cult-to-discern natural seating tiers are never- theless quite beautiful. And during the stadi- um’s opening on May 1, 1950, it was hopelessly overcrowded. For the clash between german giants 1. FC Nürnberg and Borussia Dortmund, 20,000 fans apparently crammed into the am- phitheatre. Baderstr. 8a, 37581 Bad Gandersheim

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Tips 125 03 WORKPLACE OF KONRAD KOCH Konrad Koch, a teacher at the Martino Kathar- ineum Gymnasium, recognised the positive effects of athletic activity on his students. So in 1874, he arranged for them to play the first football match ever on German soil. Whether it was actually more like rugby is an issue primar- ily discussed in Lüne- burg (see Johannem). One year later, Koch wrote the first German football rulebook and fought long and hard for the sport’s acceptance. In recognition of his pioneering work, the stadium of BSC Acosta bears his name. Herzogin-Elisabeth-Str. 81, 38104 Braunschweig 04 LUPO MARTINI In 1962, Italian workers at the VW factory in Wolfsburg, with the help of the Volkswagen social affairs depart- ment, founded the first German guestworker team, the Italian Sports 05 JOHANNEUM LÜNEBURG In 2017, football histori- an Hans-Peter Hock stumbled across eviden- ce demonstrating that football was played ac- cording to Association Rules as early as 1875 at Lüneburg College. He made the find even though he had actually gone searching for docu- mentation proving that the cradle of German football was in Dresden. He hit paydirt in the English weekly magazine „The Field,“ which con- tained a match report on the duel – which makes the former convent school home to the first official football match in Germany. Theodor-Heuss-Str. 1, 21337 Lüneburg 06 THE GHOST OF MALENTE Paul Breitner felt like „in a barracks“. But in 1974 and 1990 Germany be- came World Champions after staying at the sports school of Malente. Club (ISC) Lupo. The name, which means „wolf“ in Italian, is a reference to the symbol of Rome. In 1981, the club merged with a sec- ond Italian team, form- ing the pleasant-sound- ing Unione Sportiva Italiana Lupo Martini. Only in recent years, however, has the club found success on the pitch. In the 2016-17 and 2018-19 seasons, the club played in the Regional League North, the fourth-highest level in Germany. But no matter what happens on the pitch, the catering in and around Lupo Stadi- um is sufficient to guar- antee a wonderful foot- ball experience. A piece of Italy in the north. Hubertusstr. 10, 38448 Wolfsburg Am Stadion 4, 23714 Malente

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126 Travel Guide EURO 2024 West From the MIRACLE to HORST 07 THE STANDS OF WEIDENPESCH The wooden bleachers in Weidenpesch Park have been withstanding the elements since 1920. And the stadium itself is even older. Built in 1903, it hosted two Ger- man championship fi- nals: In 1905, Union 92 Berlin won, followed five years later by Karlsru- her FV. Until the found- ing of 1. FC Köln and the construction of Müngersdorf Stadium, VfL Köln 99 ruled the Cologne football scene from here. The team even played in the Ger- man championship sem- ifinal in 1941. National team players Leo Wilden and Jupp Röh- rig started their careers here, as did the well-travelled trainer Otto Pfister. The stadi- um had its last moment in the sun when Sönke Wortmann used it as a film location for „The Miracle of Bern“ about the world cup of 1954. After that, Weidenpesch Park began a slow yet steady decline — even if the stands have been listed as a historical site since 1989. Rennbahnstr. 52, 50737 Köln 08 BÖKELBERG MEMORIAL SITE It Is here where a pro- vincial club from the Lower Rhine became a great European club. Championships were celebrated here along with a UEFA Cup victo- ry. At some point, though, Böckelberg pulled Borussia down into the second league. This wonderful stadium was simply too small and two old. Today, tiered steps recall the standing area of yore. There are also smaller replicas of the floodlight poles that guided the way to Glad- bach home matches until 2004, along with a stain- less-steel likeness of the legendary scoreboard. Bökelstraße / In de Kull, 41063 Mönchengladbach

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Tips 127 10 KAISERAU SPORTS SCHOOL 11 HANKE AND HRUBESCH A traffic circle isn’t ex- actly a classic meet-up spot for football freaks. It’s a different story in Hamm. So-called „Allt- agsmenschen“, or „nor- mal people“ — life-sized cement figures by the artist Christel Lechner — are scattered about the city. In the neigh- bourhood of Pelkum, though, are two football- ers who, in May 2017, were ceremonially chris- tened Horst and Mike by two famous sons from the city, Horst Hrubesch and Mike Hanke. When it comes to resemblance, though, there is room for improvement. At least the grass is green. The North has the spirit of Malente, the West has Kaiserau. It is here where the German na- tional team had its train- ing camp ahead of the 1974 World Cup and it is here where the team returned after its group stage struggles. The Kaiser Franz Becken- bauer and his mates also came by ahead of the 1990 World Cup. For the 2006 tournament in Germany, it was the Spanish team that moved into the 48 „up- scale“ rooms of the sports hotel to train on the five football pitches and one indoor football hall offered by the facili- ty – though with rather modest success. The Spaniards fell in the round of 16 to France. Now, for the 2024 Euro- pean Championships, the Albanians have booked the hotel. For the Kuq e zinjtë (red-and- white), a round-of-16 result would likely count as a success. 09 HOME OF THE CELESTIAL STRIKERS On the first matchday of Upper League West in 1974, SpVgg Erken- schwick celebrated a 5:0 victory in Aachen. Nine members of the starting 11 worked in the Ewald Fortsetzung coalmine. On the way back home, a policeman told them: „Boys, you belong in heaven!“ For six years, the team demonstrated what a hard-working team could achieve. And then, the great age of the ce- lestial strikers came to an end. The mine was shut down in 1992, but parts of the facility can still be visited. Right next door is Stimberg Stadium. Ewaldstr. 64, 45739 Oer-Erkenschwick Jakob-Koenen-Str. 2, 59174 Kamen Kamener Str./Kleine Werlstr., 59077 Hamm ) 3 ( s e g a m I o g a m I

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128 Travel Guide EURO 2024 East From STURMI to STEFFEN 12 GDR FOOTBALL MUSEUM Between Gröbern and Gossa, you will find the smallest GDR football museum in the world. That, at least, is the claim made by museum operator Uwe Sturm. But it’s not open to those who just happen by, you have to book a visit by email: stur- mi242@t-online.de. Then, the tour can start. Rare shirts from Lok Leipzig and FC Karl- Marx-Stadt are on dis- play, as are Dynamo Dresden crackers. There is an ashtray bearing the insignia of Hallescher FC, allegedly worth over 200 euros. A kit from Stahl Riesa that looks like a mesh shirt but is actually intended 13 SUHL ANNOUN- CER’S BOOTH For western German football fans, Tasmania Berlin is the synonym for absolute football inade- quacy. In the 1965-66 season, the side played the worst Bundesliga team of all time. But eastern Germany has its own Tasmania. In 1984, BSG Motor Suhl found its way into the top GDR league. The club from the hometown of Simson mopeds earned just six total points and won only one of its 26 matches. In Aue Stadium, the rather unique announcer’s booth still recalls all the bad news that was disse- minated that year to the disappointed fans. to be a kind of breatha- ble shirt for hot summer days. If you want to make Sturmi really happy, bring him a BSG Stahl Riesa kit with the club’s name on the chest – he doesn’t have one yet. Some- times, former players even drop by, like Dixie Dörner. But the Dyna- mo crackers won’t be served no matter what. 06774 Muldestausee, Address on request Auenstr. 1, 98529 Suhl

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Tips 129 14 HOLGER ERLER STATUE Residents of the tiny town of Aue love their plucky football club, which seems to be infused with magical powers from the Ore Mountains. How else could professional foot- ball survive here for so long? The team is exem- plified by Holger Erler, who played more mat- ches for Erzgebirge Aue (and predecessor Wismut) than any other. Later, the former midfielder joined the municipal council. And since 2013, a woo- den sculpture of him has been standing in front of the train station — where he greets all those who come by to witness this miracle firsthand. Am Bahnhof, 08280 Aue 15 RUDOLF HARBIG STADIUM The place Dynamo Dres- den now plays is the site of a football stadium that was built 100 years ago. But even when the Dresdner Kampfbahn was opened in 1923, the pitch already had an 16 STADION AM QUENZ In the stadium known as Stadion am Quenz, whe- re the former GDR top- league club Stahl Bran- denburg used to play its home matches, there was once a digital scorebo- ard, erected in 1986. At some point, though, it became so dilapidated that now, scores must once again be posted by hand. Which is nice, since it provides a hint of the stadium’s past charms, back when BSG Stahl was a powerhouse and played before 18,000 fans in a UEFA Cup match against IFK Göte- borg. And when Steffen Freund was at the height of his powers. extensive football history. As early as 1874, it was home to the Dresden Football Club — no less than the first football club in continental Europe. It was founded by English and — perhaps surpri- singly — American busi- nesspeople, and the team played right where Dyna- mo still does. The stadi- um’s current name is a tribute to Rudolf Harbig, a track-and-field athlete who specialised in the middle distances. He was particularly strong in the 800 meters, and he set fully four world records within just a few months in 1939. Of interest for lovers interested in tying the knot: Since 2013, the stadium has been booka- ble for weddings. Lennéstr. 12, 01069 Dresden Magdeburger Landstr. 228, 14770 Brandenburg s e g a m I o g a m i I , ) 2 ( r e p u K k i r d n e H s n e J

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130 Travel Guide EURO 2024 South From BETZE to ALZENAU 17 BETZENBERG TRAIL The pilgrimage route to the Betzenberg, the be- loved stadium in Kai- serslautern, is an intan- gible cultural treasure. From the train station, the first stop — just 60 paces away — is the favourite fan pub Zum 12. Mann (Richard- Wagner-Straße 103). Continue across Bahn- hofstraße to the histori- cal Betzebud food kiosk (Eisenbahnstraße 74), the perfect place to fill up on stuffed pig’s sto- mach before trudging up the hill. Carry on through the pedestrian underpass to the Elf Freunde Kreisel, where members of the 1950s- era team, the famous „Walter Elf“, are memo- 18 ENGLISH GROUNDS The first football pitch in Karlsruhe and one of the first in all of south- ern Germany is to be found here. Even the origins of the German national team can be traced back to the for- mer little exercise grounds here, also called the English Grounds. This is where, on No- vember 29, 1899, before the founding of the Ger- man Football Associa- tion, the third of the so-called original nation- al games took place. In front of 5,000 fans, many of whom skipped school for the event, the German team fell 0:7 to England. rialised in concrete. Then comes the stadi- um’s West Curve (known as „nuff“). Having finally arrived above the city, take a brief break at the memorial for the five Kaiserslautern players who were part of the Miracle of Bern in 1954 before enjoying a well- earned wine spritzer behind the so-called Horst Eckel Goal. Start: Bahnhofstr. 1,, 67655 Kaiserslautern Moltkestr. 24, 76133 Karlsruhe

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Tips 131 19 THE FOUNDING FLAG OF 1899 Bundesliga side TSG Hoffenheim is often mocked for the „1899“ in its name. The num- ber, after all, suggests a long tradition, despite the team having been boosted into the Bunde- sliga in the 2000s by the vast financial wherewith- al of SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp. Yet hanging in the local his- tory museum of Hoffen- heim is proof: the found- ing flag of TSG from 1899. No joke. And that’s not the only reason for a visit to the region of Kraichgau. Come for its beautiful rolling hills and gastronomical delights (Maultaschen!). Waibstadter Str. 12, 74889 Sinsheim-Hoffenheim 20 HERZOGEN- AURACH Sports history across five square kilometres: In the northern part of this small Bavarian town (population: 26,000) is the Adidas „World of Sports,“ which includes the lodgings of the Ger- ) 2 ( s e g a m I o g a m I 21 ALZENAU AN- NOUNCER’S BOOTH Like an airport tower, the workplace of Toni Ritter skies high above the Prischoß sports cen- tre. As such, the nick- name for the stadium announcer for FC Bay- ern Alzenau — „Toni from the Tower“ — ma- kes perfect sense. And keeping a clear overview is important for Alzenau. The club from Lower Franconia, whose insig- nia is extremely similar to that of FC Bayern München, has been playing in the football association of the neig- hbouring state of Hesse since 1992 because of the town’s geographic proximity. Prischoßstr. 57, 63755 Alzenau 22 RENTAMT FÜRTH It was in the middle-class Inn — that goes back to 1724 — where a bunch of football loving boys foundet the SpVgg Fürth in 1903. man national team for the last and the upcom- ing European Champi- onships. Training takes place in Adi Dassler Stadium, on the former grounds of a U.S. Army base. The stadium takes its name from the com- pany founder and inven- tor of screw-in football cleats, of whom there is a statue on the grounds. The route to town pass- es by Puma headquar- ters, the company Ru- dolf Dassler founded after the two brothers had a falling-out in 1948. To the south is 1. FC Herzogenaurach, where the dazzling ca- reer of World Cup champion and Ballon d’Or winner Lothar Matthäus got its start. Adidas: Horst-Dassler-Str., Puma: Puma Way 1 Gustavstraße 61, 90762 Fürth

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136 Travel Guide EURO 2024 T ommi Grindemann squats down on his haunches. Even as the 10 mem- bers of the Proletik fan club burst into a cheerful song („Football for all, lalalalala“), he seems intently concentrated. No wonder. He’s the trainer after all. And it’s matchday, a Saturday in mid- March with VfL Chemnitz on the schedule for a top district-league fixture. But Grindemann, 30, isn’t alone on the sidelines of the artificial turf pitch. Surrounding him are substitutes, team managers and a social media maestro. All of them are part of Athletic Sonnenberg. And there are many more. More even than the number standing at the edge of the pitch, but who are still heavily involved in the club, which has grown to include six teams. They inclu- de three youth teams, a women-and-LGBTQ team, a volleyball team, a running and cricket section and a martial arts division that is currently under develop- ment. Some take care of the club’s merch, and there is also a fan commissioner, a designer, two leaders of the volleyball division, someone who takes care of events and a youth coordinator. All of them sacrifice their free time to volunteer at an amateur club that was only foun- ded just four years ago. But why? In 2019, when the last representative survey on vo- lunteering was conducted in Germany, some 28.8 milli- on people in Germany said they were engaged in some form of volunteer work. That was the equivalent of around 40 percent of the population and represented a 9 percentage-point increase over 1999. Volunteers dis- tribute food to the needy, offer first-aid courses and or- ganise concerts. Most of them, though, offer up their ti- me for sports clubs: More than 2 million people in Ger- many are involved as trainers, team managers or refe- rees. Which actually makes Athletic Sonnenberg a totally normal football club in Germany. And yet it is special, nonetheless. Because the two men’s teams alone include players from 15 different countries and because, despite only playing in the top district league, it boasts

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138 Travel Guide EURO 2024 Athletic Sonnenberg („sun mountain“) has found suc- cess. So many people have volunteered their services that club leaders find themselves facing the question: Is it possible to create even more positions? That wasn’t the case when Grindemann first encountered the club in late 2021. Athletic was searching for a trainer at the time, and Grindemann had heard from a colleague of his about the Sonnenberg club. So he came by to watch the team train a few times. „I stood at the fence outside, like a scout,“ he says. Most of the training sessions, says Grindemann, consisted of 30 minutes of passing exerci- ses and then a game. Grindemann came to the conclusi- on that the team could use someone like him. Since then, he has been trying to give Athletic Sonnenberg his best for 16 to 20 hours a week. He is, as he says, „tactically ambitious.“ He wat- ches football matches with an analytic eye. Until just a few months ago, he would prepare his players for upco- ming fixtures with half-hour presentations. Who should run where and when, various corner routines, things like that. „Because it was fun,“ he says. And because he found it easier to show his players what he expected of them. For him, it translated to about an hour extra pre- paration time – extending to five hours ahead of longer tactical meetings during the summer and winter breaks. These days, though, PowerPoint belongs to the past. It takes too much time – for the players. Nevertheless, Grindemann’s results speak for themselves: Two sea- sons, two promotions. And Athletic is at the top of the table this year as well. But the match against VfL Chemnitz isn’t going well. The players trudge into the dressing room at half- time down 0:1 – where Bao, the club’s social media gu- ru, has already taken a seat to edit photos on a laptop. Grindemann, for his part, has once again sunk into a crouch to study his notes until all the players have arri- ved. The opponent’s pressing isn’t working at all, says Grindemann as he pulls out a large, magnetic tactics board from the corner. The players hang on his every word. And then, they’re off for the second half – on the

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Since the club has only been around for four years, the trophy case is still rather empty. But the team has already earned two promotions. Feature 139 grass pitch of the Chemnitz Sports Forum in the sout- hern part of the city. Sonnenberg, the hill in Chemnitz the club calls home, is a 15-minute drive from here. Even though Athletic is the home team on this day, it isn’t taking pla- ce in their own part of the city. The club, after all, do- esn’t have its own pitch and trains at facilities belonging to other clubs like Handwerk Rabenstein and Fortuna Chemnitz. Which is why the trainer, managers and players have to bring along all of their equipment each time. Training after training. Match after match. All the way across the city, as Grindemann says. When they take the pitch, the team captain wears a rainbow arm- band while fans wave a Pride flag. Athletic may not have its own pitch, but it does have a special place in the city. When the city of Chemnitz has landed in the head- lines of Germany’s newspapers in recent years, it has ge- nerally been because of the city’s Nazis. Like in 2018, when a gang of right-wing extremists chased migrants through the city. On videos, xenophobic chants like „fo- reigners out!“ can be heard. One year later, Chemnitz FC, the largest club in the city, held a requiem for Tho- mas Haller, a neo-Nazi who had died. Haller was the founder of a fan group called HooNaRa, which stands for „hooligans, Nazis, racists.“ Sonnenberg, a neighbourhood that the right-win- gers sought 10 years ago to declare a „Nazi quarter,“ is multicultural and, with 17,000 residents, the second lar- gest of Chemnitz’s 39 districts. Twenty-six percent of those living there have migration backgrounds, a share only exceeded in the city by the centre (40 percent) and Furth (33 percent). With an average age of 52, the regi- on of Chemnitz is the oldest in all of Europe, despite being a large city that is also home to a university, and it is also shrinking, dropping from 294,000 in 1990 to around 252,000 at the end of 2023. Those who have re- mained are often still there by choice. Such as the musi- cian Kummer, whose band Kraftklub once wrote a hymn to their home called „Ich will nicht nach Berlin,“ or „I don’t want to go to Berlin“.

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Feature 141 young because of when it was founded, but its members are also young. The average age of the club’s almost 240 members is just 26. Did he and the others also start the club because of the city’s poor reputation? „That’s al- ways just under the surface,“ says Georgi. „Even if that impression is a bit stronger from outside.“ But it an impression also shared by Athletics fans. „We are friends and people who want to watch foot- ball, but cool football,“ says a member of the fan club Proletik Sonnenberg, who, like all of the group’s mem- bers, prefers not to be named. With around 40 mem- bers, Proletik sees itself as decisively anti-fascist and on the left side of the political spectrum. They no longer wanted to accept the fact that football in Chemnitz had largely been overrun by the right wing. So they decided to do something about it. Like a year ago when, ahead of a home match against Rapid Chemnitz III, Proletik wrote „Football for all means Nazis out!“ beneath an Instagram post. „The match against Rapid is particularly important to us because right-wingers are on the pitch and in the stands,“ the post continued. It was a reference to family members of Thomas Heller, the late neo-Nazi and HooNaRa founder, who Proletik says are still active on behalf of Rapid Chemnitz. Which is why Proletik clo- sed with the words: „Come colourful! Come loud!“ An- tifa Leipzig announced that they intended to accept the invitation. The match, which had been scheduled for Ascension Day, was postponed by the district league as- sociation due to security concerns, and ultimately can- celled, with the score set at 0:0. The clash against VfL Chemnitz, meanwhile, final score 1:1, also ends with a point for Athletic. „Quick circle!“, Grindemann yells and gathers his team for a brief meeting. He is pleased, particularly given the nu- merous absences, because of which the trainer only had 13 players at his disposal. The team is still unde- feated in the second half of the season, and Athletic is also still attracting attention off the pitch as well. Be- cause the club and its fans continue to stand up to the

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142 Travel Guide EURO 2024 right. Making a statement. Not all the clubs in Chem- nitz are pleased about it. In late February, the Chem- nitz Football Association hosted a „club dialogue“, a meeting of all clubs in the city. Andreas Georgi, the father of founder Ferenc and also a co-trainer in the ongoing season, represented Athletic at the meeting. On the agenda: Athletic Sonnenberg itself. „The chair of the district association started the session with all the rumours about us that have been swirling,“ says Georgi. That Athletic fans can’t control themselves. That Athletic players have stolen things like Bluetooth speakers. And then the clubs were surveyed. Handwerk Rabenstein, the club that hosts Athletic teams for trai- ning, was the first to speak up, says Georgi. „Their re- presentative said: ‘I’ve got to defend them. They’ve been training at our club for months and I have not- hing negative to report.’“ Other clubs also had nothing bad to say about Athletic, says Georgi. He suspects that all the attention for Athletic Sonnenberg have made other clubs feel underappre- ciated. Even though they, too, are run by volunteers. Even though members of other clubs also pick up children and teenagers and drive them to practice be- cause they come from families who cannot afford it. „Nowhere have we said that other clubs are doing bad work,“ says Georgi. Either way, they are going to keep going – for a number of reasons. Because a victory won together on the weekend invigorates them for the entire week, as Grindemann says. Because he wants to be part of decisi- ons about what the club stands for, as co-founder Ferenc says. Because all of them here at Athletic want to show that Chemnitz can be different and is often much better than its reputation. A welcoming place for all people, no matter where they come from. Which is also why Ferenc has a quick answer for those looking for a single-sentence description of Athletic Sonnenberg. „The best one is what our fans sing: Football for all.“ He could also have said: Volun- • teer post for all. People go to football matches because they don’t know how it will finish. And they go to Athletic Sonnen berg to change something.

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Top 05 147 The Top 5 books 03 MATCH DAYS In his books, Reng frequently focuses on the marginal figures of football. His debut took a close look at keeper Lars Leese, who climbed from a regional league all the way to the Premier League. In this volume, Reng tells the story of Heinz Höher a „largely un- known player and trainer today“, as Heng himself writes. But the tome reads like an everyday history covering 50 years of the Bundesliga. Ronald Reng, 2013 01 THE NEXT MATCH IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST The late author Ror Wolf, who passed away in 2020, was one of Germany’s greatest football intellec- tuals. He achieved fame through his sound art: He created phonic collages, turning quotes from play- ers, reporters and fans into audio dramas. And he came up with some wonderful bon mots of his own. Such as: „The world may not be a football, but it’s no secret that in football, there is a whole lot of world.“ Ror Wolf, 2010 02 TAMING FOOTBALL Even in the early 1990s, back when media coverage of football often ended with the final whistle, Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling saw the game as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, 1992 04 WE WILL LIVE FOREVER 1. FC Union Berlin never played much of a role in GDR football. The club’s only triumph, a FDGB Cup victory, came in 1968. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the team spent most of its time in the lower leagues. But in 2019, Union made the sensatio- nal leap to the Bundesliga – and the prize-winning reporter Christoph Bier- mann embedded himself with the team for a year. This is an intimate look at an amazing club Christoph Biermann, 2021 05 TESTS OF COURAGE Ten years ago, shortly after his career ended, Thomas Hitzlsperger had his com- ing out. His autobiography is a story of great courage and the extreme pressures of professional football. Thomas Hitzlsperger, 2024

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148 Travel Guide EURO 2024 01 NO PAIN, NO GAIN It used to be a tradition in Germany for top musical acts to head to the record- ing studio with the German national team. In 1974, Udo Jürgens dragged them into the studio for „Football is our life“, and in 1986, they joined Peter Alexander for „Mexico mi amour“. The last such collaboration came in 1994 when the German team rocked out with the Scorpions: Andi Möller on air guitar and Thomas Berthold on the mic. Poetry. The Scorpions, 1994 02 LOBBY The band’s biggest hit, „’54, ’74, ’90, 2010“, was played in beer tents across the land. But in their best football anthem, they sing almost shyly by compari- son: „There’s no lobby in my football club.“ The Top 5 songs 03 MAURICE, DAS GEHT HIER DOCH ALLES DEN BANACH RUNTER If the previous band was melodic, this one is anything but, preferring a well curated cacophony full of football references (Their second album is called „ Dahlin Orgel“.), both obvious and obscure. The band even met Horst Hrubesch, 04 BIN I RADI, BIN I KÖNIG Football players haven’t always just served as backup singers for German pop-schlock, some have gone solo. Gerd Müller crooned „Dann macht es bumm“, and Franz Beck- enbauer warbled about „real friends“. In 1965, Peter Radenkovic, the keeper for TSV 1860, even reached fifth place on the charts with his song „Bin I Radi, Bin I König“, an effort that immediately became a punchline in the club house of crosstown rival FC Bayern. Petar Radenkovic, 1965 05 JA, DER FUSSBALL IST RUND WIE DIE WELT the man behind their “The best German football song name, for an interview once: „We handed him our record and he asked: ‘What’s that?’ We said: ‘noise’. He responded: ‘That’s what my daughters listen to.’“ of all time, the ‘Three Lions’ from Hohenschönhausen!” That’s what Briton Trevor Wil- son says, and he should know. He owns the biggest football music collection in the world. Sportfreunde Stiller, 1997 Hrubesch Youth, 1999 Frank Schöbel, 1974

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Top 05 149 01 THE MIRACLE OF BERN The „football film“ genre used to be problematic. The scenes felt wooden, the dialogue inauthentic. But then along came Sönke Worthmann, whose „Miracle of Bern“ was, despite the „rising from the ashes“ pathos, the first German film to take football seriously. When Rahn shoots, it actually looks like Rahn is shooting. Worthmann followed up with „Germany: A Summer’s Fairytale“ about the 2006 World Cup, which is also worth a look. Sönke Wortmann, 2003 02 LESSONS OF A DREAM A biopic about the teacher Konrad Koch, who is responsible for one of the first football matches ever to be played on German soil in 1874 – hoping that sport would encourage his students to spend less time in the bar. The Top 5 films 03 POTATO FRITZ „Potato Fritz“ isn’t a football film. Nor is it especially good. Still, it is emblematic for the short-lived trend of top footballers taking to the silver screen. In this movie, Paul Breitner, world champion in 1974, plays a sergeant. But because the national team player’s Bavarian accent is so strong, his role later had to be voiced over. That job was taken on by Hartmut Reck, the German voice of Anthony Hopkins and Terrence Hill. In short, it’s a ton of fun. 04 TOM MEETS ZIZOU Director Aljoscha Pause spent eight years following footballer Thomas Broich with a camera – from his first years as a professional in Burg- hausen and the ensuing stressful years in the Bundes liga to his transfer to Australia, a move that initially seemed like a capitulation, but ultimately proved good for Broich. A close-up portrait of an interesting player and a critical look at the football business. Aljoscha Pause, 2011 05 SCHWARZE ADLER An impressive documentary focusing on racism in German football. Erwin Kostedde, a protagonist in the film, says: „In Germany, you have to be like Berti Vogts. Then, you’ll be just fine.“ Sebastian Grobler, 2011 Peter Schamoni, 1976 Torsten Körner, 2021

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Match schedule 151 Munich A June 14, 9 p.m. June 15, 3 p.m. Cologne June 19, 6 p.m. Stuttgart June 19, 9 p.m. Cologne June 23, 9 p.m. Frankfurt/M. June 23, 9 p.m. Stuttgart Berlin B June 15, 6 p.m. June 15, 9 p.m. Dortmund June 19, 3 p.m. Hamburg June 20, 9 p.m. Gelsenkirchen June 24, 9 p.m. Düsseldorf June 24, 9 p.m. Leipzig Germany Hungary Germany Scotland Switzerland Scotland Spain Italy Croatia Spain Albania Croatia Switzerland Hungary Scotland : : : : : Germany : Hungary Switzerland : Croatia : Albania : Albania : : : Spain Italy Italy Stuttgart C June 16, 6 p.m. June 16, 9 p.m. Gelsenkirchen June 20, 3 p.m. Munich June 20, 6 p.m. Frankfurt/M. June 25, 9 p.m. Cologne June 25, 9 p.m. Munich Slovenia Serbia Slovenia Denmark England Denmark : : : : : : Denmark England Serbia England Slovenia Serbia

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152 Travel Guide EURO 2024 Hamburg D June 16, 3 p.m. June 17, 9 p.m. Düsseldorf June 21, 6 p.m. Berlin June 21, 9 p.m. Leipzig June 25, 6 p.m. Berlin June 25, 6 p.m. Dortmund München E June 17, 3 p.m. June 17, 6 p.m. Frankfurt/M. June 21, 3 p.m. Düsseldorf June 22, 9 p.m. Köln June 26, 6 p.m. Frankfurt/M. June 26, 6 p.m. Stuttgart Poland Austria Poland Netherlands Netherlands France Netherlands : : France : Austria : France : Austria : Poland Romania Belgium Slovakia Belgium Slovakia Ukraine : : : : : : Ukraine Slovakia Ukraine Romania Romania Belgium Dortmund F June 18, 6 p.m. June 18, 9 p.m. Leipzig June 22, 3 p.m. Hamburg June 22, 6 p.m. Dortmund June 26, 9 p.m. Hamburg June 26, 9 p.m. Gelsenkirchen Turkey Portugal Georgia Turkey Czechia Georgia Czechia Czechia : Georgia : : : : : Turkey Portugal Portugal

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PUBLISHER DFB Culture Foundation Otto-Fleck-Schneise 6 60528 Frankfurt am Main T 069 6788 – 452 or 069 6788 – 519 www.dfb-stiftungen.de This publication does constitute an expression of opinion by the publisher. The authors are solely responsible for the content of their work. DESIGN Katharina Noemi Metschl PHOTO DEPARTMENT Jens Kuiper, Philipp Pernkopf COPY EDITING Helmut Krähe PHOTO EDITING Simon Adrian, Alex Küper PHOTOGRAPHERS Felix Adler, Tobias Ahrens, Sofia Brandes, Tobias Schult Published in May 2024 ILLUSTRATOR Philipp Schultz – Raum für Illustration AUTHORS Tobias Ahrens, Andreas Bock, Francesco Collini, Christoph Dieckmann, Lars Graue, Tors- ten Groß, Mia Güthe, Philipp Köster, Max Nölke, Ronald Reng TRANSLATOR Charles Hawley PRINTING Zeitfracht Medien GmbH IMPLEMENTATION 11FREUNDE Verlag GmbH & Co. KG Gubener Str. 47 10243 Berlin info@ 11freunde. de T 030 403936 − 0 F 030 403936 − 122 www.11freunde.de CONCEPT Philipp Köster COORDINATION Dirk Völler MANAGING EDITOR Ilja Behnisch

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From June 14 to July 14, 2024, European football fans will be turning their eyes to Germany. More than a million foreign supporters will be cheering on their national teams in stadiums from Hamburg to Munich, Cologne to Berlin. With the EURO 2024, the host’s football culture is also sliding into the spotlight. This travel guide through German football culture searches for people and stories away from the ten EURO stadiums that demonstrate how football is lived in this country. European artists and others in the culture sector provide insight into their personal views of football in Germany. City maps and regional travel itineraries lead visitors to football museums, to almost forgotten football grounds and to lost EURO treasures. We present amateur clubs as drivers of integration and fans who dig deep into the histories of their clubs. We explain why the last European Championships in Germany, back in 1988, laid the foundation for a present-day fan culture that is envied around the world. And how Harry Kane discovered that dogs are his favourite animal.