St. Pauli. Carles Vinas

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      The Club’s Early Years

      In the same period St. Pauli became an ‘elevator’ club, meaning it went up and down from different football divisions, chalking up top-flight promotions and relegations. Disappointments and celebrations were a constant occurrence. For that reason the period became popularly known as the ‘yoyo years’. All the same, it was then that the club’s administrative structure was consolidated. In the 1923–4 season, the sports team definitively opted to leave Hamburg-St. Pauli Turnverein to become an independent football team. It was then that the selection of St. Pauli’s board of directors was formalised. In its first meeting, held on 5 May 1924, trader Henry Rehder, one of the club’s pioneers, was chosen as president. He was accompanied on the board by fellow trader Johny Barghusen, and the ex-player and civil servant Amandus Vierth. We can say, therefore, that 1924 was the year in which Sankt Pauli was actually constituted as a football club, as its separation from gymnastic activity was completed. The decision was hastened by the German Gymnastics Association’s policy of prohibiting its members from taking part in other sports’ matches and clubs.

      The 1924–5 season was the first in which the club competed under the official name of Fußball Club Sankt Pauli (FCSP). The entity was linked to the local bourgeoisie, while the local working-class community supported the teams in the Workers’ Gymnastics and Sports Association (Arbeiter-Turn- und Sport-bund, ATSB).¹ Indeed, in those years the DFB refused membership to the workers’ clubs, to whom it contemptuously referred to as ‘gangs of independent workers’.²

      It might sound surprising now that during the interwar years footballers in worker-related teams, such as Komet Blankenese and Billstedt-Horn – two historic Hamburg teams that still exist today – kicked and violently tackled St. Pauli players. Yet for the other teams the footballers in white and brown represented a right-wing bourgeois club.³

      Until 1933 the club participated in different interregional leagues. Between 1922 and 1926 it played in the Nord-deutsche League; the following year in the A-Klasse Hamburg – a lower-level tournament. The team was built around young players, such as the skilled Richard Rudolph ‘Käppen’ (1895–1969).⁴ As we suggested previously the period was crucial for the club’s future as, finally, in 1924, its members left the shelter of the gymnastics association to form FC Sankt Pauli. The team’s historic eleven was made up of Sump, Bergemann, Hadlich, Spreckelsen, Röbe, Ralf, Nack, Soltwedel, Otto Schmidt, Schreiner and Jordan. Finally the run-ins the club had with different sporting bodies led to the official founding, on 5 May 1924, of FC St. Pauli – officially registered as FC St. Pauli von 1910.

      The next year, which also saw the first striptease in St. Pauli and the police discovering that drugs were being trafficked locally,⁵ the team ended sixth with 17 points. The glory that year went to its arch-rival, HSV, which was proclaimed champion. St. Pauli’s key player was its right-winger, Berni Schreiner, a young journalist who usually played with a handkerchief in his hand, which he never lost despite his speed.

      In the 1927–8 season the Hamburg team returned to the North German League. It only played there for a year because in 1928–9 it took part in the Toes Round (Runde der Zehen, with ‘Toes’ referring to the number ten – the amount of teams competing). This tournament was created because several northern clubs were unhappy about the fragmentation of football into different local leagues. The change became known as the Fußball-Revolution (Football Revolution). They had also come together to avoid being disadvantaged vis-à-vis the southern teams. St. Pauli was joined in the Toes Round by Hamburg SV, Holstein Kiel 07, SV St. Georg and SV Victoria Hamburg. By creating the new league the Northern German Football Association had to negotiate with these clubs. At the end of discussions, an agreement was reached to make several reforms to the competition system. As a result, six major leagues began playing in the 1929–30 season. In this fleeting adventure of the ‘ten chosen ones’ St. Pauli ended the season in sixth place after winning five out of nine matches, and losing four. Its goal balance was zero, having scored 37 goals and let in 37.

      After a restructuring of the competition, St. Pauli played the 1929–30 season in the Bezirksliga Hamburg, a kind of local second division. The team managed by Richard Sumps strolled through the tournament, coming top, five points ahead of the runner up. It was a winning team featuring footballers like Alex Guiza, Jonny Salz and Oschi Stamer. In March 1931, St. Pauli beat Eimsbütteler TV and was pronounced champion of northern Germany. This was the most important victory in the footballing career of Otto Wolff, a forward for St. Pauli, who would became a central agent in the Nazi repression in Hamburg.⁶ That year a significant change took place in the club’s directorate. For professional reasons Henry Rehder moved to Berlin and was replaced by the historic figure Wilhelm Koch – an ex-goalkeeper at the club. A 1933 board meeting chose Koch to be club president (Vereins- führer). At the same meeting Eduard Stülcken was appointed vice president. Additionally the club gained its first sponsors. These were the brothers Carl and Alexander Richte, two businessmen owning several Hamburg theatres and gambling houses, who provided a donation. This contrasted with the plight of many of the city’s inhabitants, who lacked financial means. Indeed, 40 per cent of the population was unemployed.⁷ Undoubtedly this was the perfect storm for parties putting forward radical political solutions, such as the Nazi NSDAP. In Hamburg their growth became noticeable in 1927. That year they created a squad to fight communists and social democrats on the street and came up with a strategy to control the taverns (kneipen) – the meeting point for the area’s sailors and workers. The following year, in 1928, the party gained three seats in the Hamburg assembly. Within four years its electoral support had grown considerably: the Nazis went from having three to 51 seats out of a total of 160. Of course Nazi presence in the institutions was replicated in the streets, where clashes with members of communist and left-wing parties were constant.⁸ Between 1924 and 1929, attacks by SA (Sturmabteilung, Stormtroopers or Brownshirts) paramilitary squads led to the death of 29 communists across the country. In the next three years the figure reached 92. This was not surprising if we bear in mind that the communists were the only group that confronted the SA on the streets.

      Initially the impact of Nazism on FC St. Pauli was insignificant, as it was on other clubs. It was limited to a couple of players, such as the aforementioned Wolff or the young Walter Koehler (an SA member), the odd director that joined the Nazis and Wilhelm Koch reaching the presidency. Koch’s Nazi membership was revealed many years later and caused controversy. He was the club’s longest-serving president and the stadium was named after him (the Wilhelm Koch Stadion) for many years in recognition of his work. Yet he had been a member of the Nazi Party from 5 July 1937. This was not an isolated case. That same year one and a half million Germans joined the National Socialists, including staff at the DFB and numerous heads of other sports clubs. All the same, the fact that Koch did not join the NSDAP until 1937 suggests that he signed up more out of opportunism than conviction, which would also explain why he never played a leading role in the party. Despite his Nazi membership, he tried as much as he could to keep the club at a distance from the growing politicisation at the time. For that reason he was reluctant to allow the Nazis to use the club’s facilities for their own sporting or propaganda activities. Koch wanted the St. Pauli stadium to only be used for playing football.⁹

      In that turbulent period, before the outbreak of the Second World War, German football had been dominated by Schalke – the winner of five titles between 1934 and 1940. St. Pauli competed in the Nord-deutsche Oberliga, although it also combined playing in the Gauliga Nordmark¹⁰ and the Gauliga Hamburg with competing in other regional contests.¹¹

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      1. This was founded in 1893 in Gera, in the east of Thuringia state. The federation changed its name in 1919 when