HOLIGANISM IN ANCIENT GERMAN FOOTBALL
Pitch invasions, attacks on referees, running battles between drunken rivals, clashes between police and young fans, racist chanting and railway carriages demolished. These kinds of incidents were not restricted to Western Europe but were part of a common culture of soccer violence which established itself on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Despite concerted efforts by the East German Ministry of State Security (MfS) and the police to curtail football- related disorder, disturbances rose from 960 in the 1986–87 to 1,090 in the following season.
These figures made unwelcome reading for the ruling party, the SED, and its security forces. Not only did soccer hooliganism damage the reputation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) both at home and abroad, it was not even supposed to exist in a society which claimed to have eliminated its preconditions. According to the tenets of Marxist- Leninist ideology, antisocial behaviour was rooted in exploitative capitalism and the concomitant social misery of young working-class males. Why foot- ball violence and other forms of public disorder were prevalent under state socialism and how they developed in the GDR are the subject of this chapter. In exploring these and other pertinent issues in the history of GDR foot- ball, the chapter draws on declassified files held in the central and regional archives of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the Ministry of State Security of the Former German Democratic Republic (BStU), the Berlin branch of the Federal Archive and the Saxon State Archive Leipzig. These materials, which include reports and analyses by the police, the MfS and the SED Central Committee Department for Sport, provide invaluable insights into official policy-making on, and perceptions of, the hooligan ‘wars’. They are complemented by several recent studies of GDR football, the MfS and football hooliganism, notably those by Baigno and Horn, Braun, Dennis, Leske, Luther, Pleil, Spitzer, Waibel and Willmann. Published recol- lections by fans and former members of the hooligan scene, as well as the memoirs of sports functionaries, complete the source base.
The ‘strange world’ of GDR football
Although there were exceptions, notably the defeat of West Germany in the 1974 World Cup and FC Magdeburg’s triumph in the European Cup Winners’ Cup in the same year, the GDR national team and clubs failed to distinguish themselves in international tournaments. Despite this under- achievement and the attraction of West German teams, watching domestic football was a major pastime: attendances at first division (Oberliga) matches reached 2,516,000 in 1976–77 season, albeit falling below the two million mark in 1984–85. Popular interest was catered for by television and radio as well as by the daily press and specialist publications such as Fußballwoche and Deutsches Sportecho. Although, in some respects, GDR football was, to quote Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger (2000: 277), a ‘strange world’, most of its characteristics were found elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain (Duke 1995: 92–3, 95, 101). Clubs changed their names with bewildering frequency and were relocated in accordance with political criteria, players were ‘dele- gated’ to leading clubs and were called up as reservists to the army in order to weaken less privileged teams. In the absence of a transfer market, players were induced to change clubs by the bait of an apartment, a car and illegal payments above the basic salary. Journalists were under pressure to report favourably on Berlin Football Club Dynamo (BFC) and evidence has been uncovered of the doping of footballers when playing for the GDR and for their club in international tournaments (Spitzer 2004: 59–69). Referees, players, trainers and officials collaborated with the Stasi, SED organizations were attached to clubs to ensure ideological and political compliance, and BFC Dynamo, the Minister of State’s favourite team, won the Oberliga for ten consecutive seasons, from 1979 to 1988, before an ever-diminishing home support. Several of these features influenced supporters’ behaviour. Passions were aroused by the advantage derived by clubs attached to a powerful sponsor and by the blatant favouring of BFC Dynamo by top referees. Local and regional rivalries were intense. The antagonism between SG Dynamo Dresden and BFC Dynamo may have had deep roots in Saxon and Prussian history but it was also fuelled by contemporary Dresden’s resentment at the better provision of housing and consumer goods in the capital. When crowd trouble broke out over the referee’s partiality towards BFC Dynamo at an Oberliga match in December 1978, Dresden supporters complained that ‘we are cheated everywhere, even on the sports field’ (Pleil 2001: 219). By a curious irony, both teams belonged to the Dynamo Sports Association, the umbrella sports association of the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of the Interior. Erich Mielke, the autocratic and powerful Minister of State Security, who was also chair of the well-endowed Dynamo Sports Association, was determined that BFC would prevail over its Dresden comrades. The Saxon club’s famous sweeper, Hans-Jürgen Doener, recalled that Mielke told the Dresden players at their championship celebrations in 1978 that it was now the turn of BFC (Luther and Willmann 2003: 70–1). The following season witnessed the start of BFC’s long domination of the Oberliga, due in no small part to Mielke’s patronage. An earlier and much disputed attempt to fast-track the Berliners to the title took place in November 1954, when Mielke ordered the relocation of the SG Dynamo Dresden players to Berlin, where they entered the Oberliga as the newly formed SC Dynamo Berlin. The club was renamed BFC Dynamo twelve years later. The tribal rivalry between the teams and their fans on the Spree and the Elbe even spread to members of the Stasi’s own Guard Regiment in Dresden. In 1985, their behaviour at a match between the two teams was likened by one Stasi officer to that of ‘rioting fans’; some had cried out ‘bent champions!’ (‘Schiebermeister!’) as BFC were leaving the pitch.
November 1954, when Mielke ordered the relocation of the SG Dynamo Dresden players to Berlin, where they entered the Oberliga as the newly formed SC Dynamo Berlin. The club was renamed BFC Dynamo twelve years later. The tribal rivalry between the teams and their fans on the Spree and the Elbe even spread to members of the Stasi’s own Guard Regiment in Dresden. In 1985, their behaviour at a match between the two teams was likened by one Stasi officer to that of ‘rioting fans’; some had cried out ‘bent champions!’ (‘Schiebermeister!’) as BFC were leaving the pitch.
Disturbances by spectators were endemic. Only three years earlier, one Dresden fan had complained to a top SED functionary, Rudi Hellmann, that rioting occurred in recent years only when BFC played in Dresden. ‘Berlin rowdies,’ he protested, ‘had demolished the stadium and injured a number of children . . . I am of the opinion that we are all citizens of our republic and that chants of “Prussia” and “Saxony” by BFC supporters do not belong in our stadia.’
BFC’s rise was also bitterly resented by FC Union Berlin, their great rivals in the capital. The ‘Irons’, who played in humble surroundings at their stadium An der Alten Försterei in the Köpenick district had run through several name changes before settling on that of 1. FC Union in 1966. Although it won the FDGB cup two years later, it remained a yo-yo team. Union’s fans cherished its image as the eternal underdog and as a football club rooted firmly in the working class, in contrast to the Stasi-sponsored big brother across the city. (See the interviews with Union fans in Luther and Willmann (2000: 103, 136) and in Farin and Hauswald (1998: 77–8).) Their resentment at the delegation of leading players to BFC was com- pounded by anger at referees’ blatant bias in favour of Mielke’s team. With Union becoming a focus of hooligan attention, its home games against BFC were transferred by the German Football Association (DFV) for reasons of safety to the Stadion der Weltjugend from 1976 onwards. A situation analogous to that in Berlin existed in Leipzig, where competition was fierce between the city’s foremost team 1. FC Lokomotive (Lok) Leipzig and the underdogs at BSG Chemie Leipzig. The latter was regarded by its fans as the ‘local’ team in contrast to Lok, which had been created in the early 1960s on orders from above and was subsequently nurtured as one of the GDR’s elite clubs (Fuge 1997: 61, 74–5; Remath and Schneider 1999: 68–9). The structure of GDR football was overhauled on several occasions, partly to raise standards and partly as a result of the machinations of powerful political leaders and interest groups at regional and central level. While Erich Mielke, a member of the SED Politbüro as well as security minister, is the best known of these leaders, his Politbüro colleagues Harry Tisch and Egon Krenz were also involved in a game of political football. The former had been head of the SED Regional Administration in Rostock until he became chair of the FDGB, the trade union organization, in 1975. Krenz had held the key post of SED Central Committee Secretary for Security, Youth and Sport since 1983.
Many political leaders took a keen interest in football and used their connections and resources to promote their favourite team and boost the prestige of their region or organization. This pattern is repeated elsewhere, especially at the level of the state enterprises and the large-scale economic units known as combines. In consequence, central control was weaker in football than in many other branches of sport. The main authorities for sport, the German Gymnastics and Sports Association (DTSB), the DFV and even the SED Central Committee’s Department for Sport, were unable to dictate the development of GDR football and had to work in conjunction with, and sometimes against, these other interest groups. The DFV was a subsidiary of the DTSB, the overarching organisation for GDR sport. The ruthlessly energetic DTSB president, Manfred Ewald, was the mastermind behind the emergence of the GDR as a world leader in athletics, swimming, bobsleighing and many other sports. Football was a notable exception. In his memoirs, written after German unification, Ewald attributed the mediocrity of GDR football to undue interference by the political and economic functionaries at both central and regional level (Ewald 1994: 56–7), an opinion which was shared by the DFV.
Given the inflated egos and the clash of interests, arguments were bound to erupt from time to time in the upper echelons of party and state. The standard of refereeing was a bone of contention. On one occasion, during the 1985 FDGB Cup Final between BFC and Dynamo Dresden, Harry Tisch was so incensed at the performance of Rossner that he protested to Mielke that such referees were damaging the credibility of the competition.
Rossner was later banned from refereeing international and Oberliga matches. Even the SED-controlled daily newspapers such as Neues Deutschland, the specialist sport press and the FDJ organ Junge Welt, were sometimes critical of referees for favouring Mielke’s team. When Junge Welt found fault with referee Stumpf for awarding a late penalty to BFC in the game against 1. FC Lok Leipzig in March 1986, Mielke complained to Ewald and Hellmann that such scribbling undermined the standing of both BFC and the Dynamo Sports Association (MfS und Leistungssport 1994: 105). Had it been known that several top referees, Stumpf included, were Stasi informers, then the atmosphere among the dignitaries in the guest area as well as on the terraces would have been further inflamed. There is, it should be stressed, no evidence to show that referees were under direct instructions from the MfS to favour BFC (Leske 2004: 479–81; Spitzer 2004: 73–8). While passions usually ran high at BFC games, particularly away from home, disturbances also occurred when other teams clashed. In 1982, 1. FC Union’s ground was closed for two matches as a result of crowd trouble triggered by referee Habermann’s decisions in the game against FC Vorwärts Frankfurt. The police had been forced to come to the rescue of Habermann, a frequent target of criticism for his partiality towards BFC (Luther and Willmann 2000: 114–15). Biased refereeing as a source of unrest is a thread running back to the very first major football-related disorder. When BSG Horch Zwickau beat SG Dresden-Friedrichstadt 5–1 in a match which decided the Oberliga title at the end of the 1949–50 season, their victory was attributed by rioting fans to unfair decisions by the referee against the Dresden team, for reasons which were related to what was in official eyes a ‘politically incorrect’ bourgeois club (Luther 2004: 9–10; Leske 2004: 109–10). Most of the Dresden players, including Helmut Schön, left the GDR for the West soon afterwards.
