LET’S GET ONE THING CLEAR: the president of St Pauli, Hamburg’s second club, is
not a transvestite. “That’s a legend,” Sven Brux, a club official, said. “He’s a homosexual, sure; he’s an actor and runs theatres and a couple of gay bars here in the St Pauli district, but he’s not a transvestite. Yes, there are photos going around of him in women’s clothes, but that was on stage. It’s not his private thing.”
Still, not exactly Dennis Hill-Wood or Doug Ellis, though? “No, but that’s St Pauli.” It is. The St Pauli area of the port city is famous for its nightclubs, bars, red lights and student hang-outs, and the football club reflects its surroundings. The Millerntor stadium — and that includes the boardroom as well as the terraces — is a natural focal point for any football fan with what might be called an alternative lifestyle. Under the Jolly Roger flag that is their unofficial emblem can be found anarchists, students, squatters, punks and prostitutes: a cross-section of St Pauli society, although their support is widespread. Their distinctive brown and white colours can be glimpsed all over the world — even in Birmingham.
The Birmingham Boys In Brown, a group of about 25 fans from the second city, mainly Aston Villa and Birmingham City season ticket-holders, have adopted St Pauli as their second team. “We were on a week’s holiday and staying in the St Pauli district and found we had a lot in common with their fans’ attitude to football, as well as the fact that we followed underachieving sides,” Chris Sanderson, a Birmingham fan, said. “The commercialisation of football is coming to Germany but St Pauli have put a marker in the ground that they are going to stand against all that. They have the most passionate and friendly and open bunch of supporters you could hope to meet. They have a libertarian attitude and lifestyle — they are a unique force in European football.”
Founded in 1910, St Pauli took on their present identity around 20 years ago. Brux said: “Right-wingers and skinheads started going to SV Hamburg and more and more people who didn’t want anything to do with fascists and Nazis went to Millerntor to watch us because it was a peaceful atmosphere, with no right-wing stuff. And that was a nationwide signal to alternative people that there was an alternative possibility for watching football, with no antihomosexual or sexist stuff. It grew and grew and became bigger and bigger.”
Apart from providing a press-friendly public face, those supporters have also ended up running the club. “I founded a supporters’ office in 1989, and we began the first big fanzine, Millerntor Roar!” Brux said. “Everywhere in the club now, on the board, in the ticket office, are people who came from that movement (like Brux himself). A lot of supporters became members of the club, and could vote for the chairman and president, so it’s a democratic structure. They voted that it would be forbidden to wear right-wing T-shirts in the ground, and it became more and more the rule and the attitude of the club.”
But as well as being a lifestyle choice, St Pauli are also a football club. Once members of the Bundesliga, they have slipped into the third tier of German football, but could now be on the way back. They are in third place and knocked Hertha Berlin out of the German Cup before Christmas. On Wednesday they entertain Werder Bremen in the quarter-finals. “They are all internationals, and top quality players, but it’s going to be a fun game,” Ive Sulentic, the Canada midfield player, who joined St Pauli last summer, said. “We have nothing to lose. We’ll be playing at home and it’s a unique atmosphere at the Millerntor. Until you walk out and hear Hell’s Bells (by AC/DC and see the fans, it’s unexplainable — very different and very special.”
Relegation brought financial difficulties, but the fans who gave the club their identity acted to bail them out. “We still have money problems, but in 2003 it was serious,” Brux said. “Fortunately our attendances stayed at the same level, and we have an average of 17,000 in a 20,000-capacity ground, but without the same income from TV and sponsorship. We made it with the help of the supporters, who organis ed a lot of activities and solidarity concerts.”
The Birmingham Boys have held two benefit gigs (entitled “Brownstock”), the most recent of which, last November, raised €2,000 (about £1,370) for the cause. St Pauli were grateful for the help from their international fanbase, but not surprised at the interest from overseas. “When the media attention started in the Eighties and Nineties, it spread worldwide,” Heiko Schlesselmann, an official supporters’ co-ordinator, said.
“Now in every country you can find some people who have St Pauli as their second team. And in some countries like Holland you find people who only support St Pauli.”
Conversely, some German St Pauli fans choose not to support the Germany national side. “When you look at away games in the East, there are a lot of Nazi chants, so they don’t like to go. Some also say they don’t have any nation because they don’t believe in nations, and some just support the underdog — Ireland, or Jamaica, or Trinidad & Tobago.”
So can the underdogs beat Werder Bremen? “I don’t think so,” Schlesselmann said. “Hertha are well known for being thrown out of the cup by lower-league teams, but Werder take the cups very seriously. But it’s good to be back in the media spotlight again.”
