St. Pauli. Carles Vinas

the Austro-Hungarian Empire to declare war on Serbia. The ensuing war was met enthusiastically by many ordinary Germans as well as the political class – including the Social Democrats, who voted in favour of war credits. Nevertheless, the initially feverish ‘1914 spirit’ began to subside when a stalemate in hostilities developed after the Battle of the Marne (6–13 September 1914), when French troops (commanded by Marshal Joffre) halted the German advance. The hope of a blitzkreig (lightning war) was quickly dispelled. October that year witnessed the prolongation of the war on the Western Front (becoming a war of position). This development meant food shortages and hunger in the rearguard, which rebounded into social conflict.

      Paradoxically the Great War benefited St. Pauli, which won promotion to the second division after several clubs pulled out of the league due to lack of players. Of the 300 registered clubs in the northern league (NFV) before the First World War only 140 remained in it at the end of the conflict. This is not strange if we bear in mind that two million out of the nearly ten million fatalities caused by the fighting were German. The conflict had other devastating effects on people. Food shortages led to the introduction of rationing, and hunger led to riots (such as in 1917). In a wave of social agitation the revolt by sailors at the ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven²⁵ provided historic images, for example when 40,000 workers, soldiers and sailors met at Heiligengeistfeld, in November 1918, to declare the Socialist Republic of Hamburg. Despite the declaration having wide support it did not lead to the creation of a revolutionary government.²⁶

      Germany’s defeat in the First World War led to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia and the introduction – after the failed Spartacist uprising (Spartakusaufstand) – of the Weimar Republic, in the summer of 1919, thus ending the Second German Empire. In the elections to the National Assembly held that month the SPD-led coalition won an absolute majority. This put an end to the ‘left-wing adventure’ that was expressed in the conflict between communists and social democrats.

      Altogether the socio-political changes also affected the city’s and the country’s football teams. Many could not cope with the impact of war fatalities and their sporting history came to an abrupt end. Others, however, opted to merge. Consequently, on 2 June 1919 the clubs Hamburger FC 1888, Sports-Club Germania von 1887 and FC Falke joined forces to form Hamburger Sport Verein (HSV), which would be FC St. Pauli’s main sporting rival. HSV’s strip included – among other colours²⁷ – the red and white characteristic of the Hanseatic League.²⁸

      When the war ended, the disappearances and mergers of clubs meant that out of the 60 football clubs there had been in the Hamburg area, only ten remained. The membership total for the surviving teams was 1,400 – down from 8,000. In those years Sankt Pauli, like others, fielded teenage players, such as Richard Sump who made his debut at the age of 15 (in 1915). To cope with this situation the white and brown team even considered a merger with Favorite Hammonia, which did not take place in the end.

      The following year, 1919, was dramatic for St. Pauli in sporting terms. After managing, for the first time in its brief history, to play in the top flight of German football, it ended the championship at the bottom of the table. That year, 13 teams competed in the tournament and Sankt Pauli won only one game (2–1 against second-to-bottom team SPVGG Blankenese von 1903 – from the similarly named district in west Hamburg). St. Pauli lost all of its other matches, including by a humiliating 9–0 against SC Victoria. It was not all bad news that year: after paying 35,000 marks, St. Pauli gained ownership of the Heiligengeistfeld ground.

      A few months earlier, on 5 February, St. Pauli’s games and sports section held its first meeting since the Great War. Until then, gymnastics had been the most practised sport at the club but football was gaining more and more enthusiasts. This did not just happen at St. Pauli. There were social and political tensions in the Weimar Republic (1919–33), and a succession of revolutionary outbursts took place between 1920 and 1923, such as consecutive strikes on the St. Pauli docks.²⁹ But it was then that football became a mass sport in Germany and almost as popular as boxing. Its increased popularity was particularly pronounced among the working class, which since the 1920s had enjoyed more leisure time. Clearly playing the sport also grew. By 1920 the DFB had 756,000 members – almost five times more than before the First World War. It was then when the first big-name footballers emerged, such as Max Breunig, the FV Karlsruher midfielder, and Hans Kalb and Heiner Stuhlfauth, respectively a midfielder and goalkeeper for 1. FC Nürnberg.

      Other factors converged to spread football’s popularity. First there was a notable improvement in the players’ quality of game. This was associated with the gradual introduction of the eight-hour working day (between 1918 and 1923), which facilitated footballers’ training. It also was aided by the abolition of both an income tax paid by sports entities and a levy for broadcasting sports events. With regards to political factors, the demise of the anti-socialist laws in 1890 and the rise of the SPD helped football to spread by providing bigger facilities for workers to meet and create their own clubs (such as SK Frisch 04, SC Lorbeer 06 and SC Hansa von 1911 – all three in Hamburg). Additionally, dockers had their own teams, such as BSG Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampfer and SC Hamburger Seeleute.

      So St. Pauli’s rise coincided with this first boom in German football. And it did so with a small change in its football kit: from 1920 its players wore a white shirt and long brown shorts, a kit that the players would wear for three decades.

      Meanwhile, Hamburg was in full political turmoil. After the strikes by port workers³⁰ there was an unsuccessful attempt, in October 1923, to forcibly take over the city by the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD). This became known as the Hamburg Uprising. The communists wished to capitalise on the discontent of workers by imposing a strategy aimed at taking the latter’s demands beyond the factory. They wanted the streets to become a common space where workers’ struggles would come together with the demands of the unemployed masses. One of the party’s leaders was Ernst Thälmann,³¹ from the KPD’s most left-wing section. He ‘personified the communist ideal of the revolutionary worker’ and ‘was the extreme opposite of an intellectual’.³² The failure of the workers’ insurrection meant, as well as a hundred fatalities, that Communist Party members were repressed and the organisation banned. That year was the first in which the Weimar Republic managed to lessen the impact of the First World War on society. From then on, the country enjoyed a period of political and economic stability. The ‘Golden Twenties’ benefited from the devaluation of the mark and an inflow of foreign capital.

      But despite the economic boom nationally, St. Pauli was typified by poverty and insecure living conditions, which resulted from hyperinflation. As if that were not enough, the 1929 New York stock exchange crash then hit the German economy. Withdrawal of North American capital from the country left many companies without credit. Factories had to reduce production, which led to an increase in unemployment.³³ Hamburg suffered from a big decline in the circulation of goods through its port. A collapse of different local industries and a shortage of food and fuel worsened people’s plight. In a country once again plunged into an economic and political crisis – made worse by increased unemployment and the war reparations imposed on Germany by the victorious side in Versailles – many citizens chose to shun the traditional moderate parties and vote for extremist parties such as the Nazi National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) or KPD, which thanks to Thälmann became the ‘party of the unemployed’. This was shown by the strong electoral growth enjoyed by both organisations in the interwar years.³⁴

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      1. In August 1899, Reese chose to experiment with practising two sports until then unheard of at the club: football and volleyball. Petroni, St. Pauli siamo noi, p. 82.

      2. Hamburg-St. Pauli Turnverein was created on 1 April 1862 out of the merger between MTV Hamburg (founded 7 September 1852) and St. Pauli Turnverein (created 7 September 1860). Once created, the club’s promoter’s looked for and found land – near to Feldstraße – to set up in. Its headquarters – opened that same month – had some of the biggest sports halls in the period: 12,671 square metres located at the junction between Glacischaussee and Eimsbütteler (streets that today form Budapest