DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Revisiting a Children’s Classic 165 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte Alex Holznienkemper University of New Hampshire Abstract: In order to better understand current efforts by German soccer fans to defend the game they love, this article sheds light on the deeper relevance of the broad history of association formation in Germany� German soccer culture stands out among the “Big 5” leagues of European soccer for more proactive engagement of club fans, but to date, there has been scarce consideration of how the long history of Vereine and their civic relevance figure in today’s public debates surrounding soccer culture. The value of Mitbestimmung , so central to fans’ fight for soccer today, has strong roots in the widespread formation of associations in the long 19 th century� Retracing these roots reveals that while these values are not unique to professional sports, it is in soccer that we see social engagement amid modern paradoxes crystallize in a glocal battle to maintain deeply held social values that reach beyond the playing field of one sport. Keywords: football, association, Verein , Mitbestimmung , glocalization, sports culture, 50-plus-1 rule, Bundesliga Given the predictability of the Bundesliga ’ s regular season champion in the last ten-plus years, one might expect fan enthusiasm and spectatorship-both in person and for broadcasts-to be in steady decline� 1 And yet, COVID-induced spectator limitations aside, fan enthusiasm in the German Bundesliga is arguably at an all-time high (Biermann 50—53)� Average stadium attendance in the Bundesliga is close to its highest ever, while it is at its all-time high in Bundesliga 2 (“Zuschauerzahlen”)� German soccer seems as popular as ever, even if-or maybe in part because-the globalization of the sport and its increasingly corporatized management structures cause some fans to proclaim more authenticity in lower tier divisions. As successful teams like F.C. Bayern München and Borussia Dortmund amass ever greater international fan bases, some balk at 166 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 their brand of international tours and the spending of steep transfer sums to lure star players from other teams� But to date, any proclaimed fan exodus to a more romanticized lower tier of soccer competition seems limited compared to the steady increase in popularity of German soccer writ large� What accounts, then, for the persistent popularity of soccer in modernity, and in Germany in particular? What defines German soccer fandom over and against that of other national soccer leagues, and what kind of broader identity arises in soccer fandom-not just from a given team, but from soccer team fandom in general? 2 In what follows, I propose that German soccer team fandom builds on and expands an identity defined by shared social practices, namely the practices of Mitbestimmung , Teilhabe and the navigation of Spielräume broadly-conceived� These social practices are defining ideals that endow soccer fandom with a sense of collective identity oriented towards social goods that reach beyond the soccer pitch, stadium, living room couch, and even beyond identification with a given team� The navigation of Spielräume takes on two immediate senses of collective action; for one, in the context of the literal playing field of the soccer pitch, and secondly, as a dedicated member of a club ( Mitglied of a given Verein 3 )� What is more, beyond even these delimited realms that entail their own particular sets of social norms and practices, the figure of a Spielraum applies to much more than just the realm of sports� Both the collective practice of soccer on the pitch and social practice of Mitbestimmung in soccer associations figure more broadly as practice for navigation of a modern social world marked by a rupture in time (Koselleck, “Erfahrungsraum und Erwartungshorizont” 23), a Spielraum cracked open by modernity with dizzying promises of freedom, self-realization and political empowerment� One defining institution that has ironically been overlooked in the development of German soccer culture is the eingetragener Verein (e. V.) -which is simply the registered club or association and the organizational legal form adopted by most soccer or sports clubs in Germany� 4 The current soccer culture war over the soul of the game, arguably most successfully fought for in Germany, is also a fight for the kind of organization and institution that only predates soccer by about a century. Thus, while fans voice their frustration with efforts such as the UEFA Super League or oppose corporate influence from companies like Red Bull, their resistance is not merely in defense of soccer’s supposed soul, but by extension in defense of the ideals and norms that have guided the founding of countless kinds of Vereine since the late 18 th century� In German soccer in particular, fans vociferously combat the commercial imperatives usurping soccer club structures that have long-standing, if genealogically complex origins in a traditional grassroots Verein � While league regulations-which obviously impact the operation and structure of Vereine -have garnered significant at- DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 tention over the last two-plus decades, analyses seem to take the institution of the Verein itself for granted. The fight for soccer’s soul is also a collective fight for the eingetragener Verein as a particular institution that grants fans and citizens the possibility to pursue the values of participation and agency in a society marked by various false promises of those self-same values� This common struggle against what we might call the colonization of the soccer lifeworld 5 by corporate self-interest imbues soccer fans of various club affinities-even of conflicting political leanings-with a shared identity in defending a cultural realm in which Spielraum navigation is learned and practiced at a tangible level� We are dealing with two levels of identity, then: the more immediate identification with a local Verein , often out of geographical proximity or family tradition, and the higher-level shared identification with other active members in (soccer) associations� 6 In what follows, I will lay out a theoretical framing of the history of German soccer and its respective Vereine as institutions carving out distinct cultural spheres of participation, reflect on the emergence of more narrowly conceived soccer Vereine within this more general context of Vereinsgeschichte , and offer a case study of the evolution of current day F�C� St� Pauli e� V� as emblematic of both the continuities and breaks within the evolution of Fuβballvereine. My hope is that this study highlights a rich connection between the early modern emergence of Vereine in general in Germany and the current debates surrounding regulations like the “50-plus-1 rule”� Across all variations of Vereine , political leanings of fans, economic impulses, and other historical contingencies, we can distill a common set of ideals among today’s soccer fans that are also widely shared by citizens of Western modern social orders� In secular modernity’s tension between contingent social order and the promise of freedom and Mitbestimmung , German soccer Vereine have managed to a remarkable degree to become “glocal” 7 institutions that offer fans a sense of having a say in a unique organization with a global impact� Making greater sense of current German soccer culture can hardly unfold without a look back at the longer history of Vereine , the main legal entity by which soccer play and practice is organized in Germany� Though soccer’s popularity and organization has changed in many ways over the last 150-plus years, current debates surrounding soccer in Germany show remarkable aspirational continuity with the more general phenomenon of Vereinfounding in early modernity. Arguably, one of the defining features of Western modernity concerns the transition in understanding of social order in its political-legal organization� The combination of various factors-rise of the scientific method, substantive challenges to entrenched religious hierarchies, the spread of universities, as well Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 167 168 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 as the drastic acceleration of technological and industrial innovation-proved too strong of a challenge to previous legitimation mechanisms of social order� Where the delineation of distinct social estates and classes was long viewed as divinely ordained, secular modernity opens up more fluid and permeable social orders, all with the goal of enacting legitimization mechanisms from below� This complex web of developments in Europe is captured in the idea of the Denaturalisierung des Sozialen by Christoph Möllers� “Politik entzieht soziale Vergemeinschaftung den vermeintlichen Notwendigkeiten, die sich aus vorgeblich natürlichen Eigenschaften einer Bevölkerung, aus Geografie, Tradition oder Religion ergeben sollen, aber auch aus Gewohnheiten, die als selbstverständlich gelten” (Möllers 68)� With this idea of “denaturalizing the social” as part of the process of liberalizing political orders in secular modernity, Möllers captures the degree to which Europe’s prevailing social order is broken open to new possibilities for an entire population hitherto limited in both their social and geographical mobility� This upheaval of previous order, of course, entailed various new forms of collectivity, of which one of the most popular in Germany was the Verein � Particularly in economic terms, the extension of more rights to broader swaths of a given citizenry, Vereine figured prominently as concomitant forms of collectivization that allowed citizens to self-organize and collectively navigate new social spaces. “Die Assoziation als die der bürgerlichen Erwerbs- und Konkurrenzgesellschaft entsprechende Gesellungsform löst den Menschen aus der Naturabhängigkeit und schafft die Möglichkeiten zu schier unbegrenzter Selbstentfaltung” (Hardtwig, “Verein” 811)� In the transition from divine natural law to positive law as enacted by a growing citizenry, modern Western Europe not only sought to change the social order, but to reinvent the very ways in which social order is imagined� As a result, a number of paradoxes or tensions arose that continue to shape modern citizens’ self-understanding within that social order� It is within this greater context of paradigmatic upheaval that the emergence of Vereine provides a starting point for understanding ongoing struggles and debates surrounding German soccer culture� Of course, the kinds of Vereine that emerged in European society over the years vary widely in kind and longevity� What makes modern soccer Vereine particularly illustrative of these long developments is the fact that they are some of the most hotly contested kinds of associations in our current day and age� Where many other kinds of Vereine might remain fairly invisible to the public at large (such as Vereine for fishing, singing, hiking, as well as smaller Fördervereine that engage in non-profit local philanthropy), the struggle for Mitbestimmung in soccer reaches a very wide audience� What many German clubs have done on the local and national level, many other countries’ fans echoed when UEFA tried to carry out its plan for establishing the UEFA Super League in 2021 (Smith). DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 169 Before expounding on the long history of Vereine , I would first like to draw attention to some of the core concepts and tensions that guide the formation of various associations in early modernity� The emergence of the eingetragener Verein is emblematic of Germany’s late modernization and nationalization� The bumpy road to national unity in 1871 is preceded by manifold forces and counterforces both inspired by and in response to the prospect of revolution led by neighboring France� While the most immediate fights for political power took place in the form of toppling royalty in their estates or making grand proclamations as representative assemblies, from early on associations were formed to engage in the nurturing of collective action towards various desired ends� At their core, early associations sought to create spaces for individual citizens to coalesce around shared goals and identities, often with a long-term approach to bringing about social change (Hardtwig, “Verein” 810)� What crystallizes in the development of and engagement in Vereine is the (inter)personal grappling with a number of dualistic tensions in Western modernity, particularly in the liminal space between public and private selves� That is, Verein involvement becomes one of the premier vehicles of personal and collective identity formation, especially from the 19 th century onward (Nipperdey 10—11)� Where identity formation in the 21 st century frequently takes on the form of consumer choices and labeling, identity formation in the 19 th and 20 th centuries very much revolved around the formation of collectives that legally defined themselves by shared assent to membership and reference to common goals and virtues� As Otto Dann highlights in his investigation into the origins of political Vereine in Germany, it is not so much that these collectives were themselves new in early modernity� After all, the Middle Ages were also marked by various forms of collectivization, such as in “Coniurationes, Einigungen, Bünde. […] Der Verein als Rechtsform gesellschaftlicher Kooperation ist kein Spezifikum der Neuzeit” (Dann 198). What is new in the modern form of Vereine -for which there was plenty of terminological ambiguity early on-is the emphasis on voluntary assent and principal openness to membership in a given Verein . This points towards our first of four modern tensions or dialectical relationships that present new existential challenges for large portions of a growing modern citizenry� In this case, the tension arises between the principally universal appeal of Vereine and their necessary restriction to those who share certain values that define a Verein. Let us call this the inclusive-exclusive tension� Vereine are founded with a principal openness to any person becoming a member, and yet this universal appeal also rests on voluntary consent to an association’s founding principles and goals� By virtue of not identifying with an association’s ideals and principles, one remains an outsider to said group� 170 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Other tensions that materialize for modern citizens are between the political promise of freedom and self-actualization and the need for restraints on personal freedoms for the greater social good (freedom-restraint tension); the tension between an increasing demand for large-scale representation, i�e� state formation and the desire for self-governance or at least political legitimation from below (state-self-governance paradox); and, as I have argued elsewhere in the context of soccer fascination, the tension between our perception of contingency and necessity (Holznienkemper) in social order (contingency-necessity tension)� What these highlighted tensions share is a dynamic of simultaneous expansion and contraction around evolving social norms� As secular modernity breaks open constraints held in place by old social orders, the exploration and probing of new social norms by which to (self-)organize society, on the one hand, is expansive and seeks to extend who has a say in shaping society, and on the other hand it necessarily redefines new limitations on who helps shape new norms� While debates and disputes surrounding soccer culture take shape as a defense of soccer as its own good that is to be protected from outside normative influence (often understood as market imperatives), the passionate defense of the sport is not about soccer in and of itself but rather about the social practice surrounding soccer-the kind of participation and experience it entails for a wide audience and fan base� Much of today’s debate surrounding soccer concerns the defense and implementation of the so-called 50-plus-1 rule which seeks to limit the influence outside investors can have on a soccer Verein � In exploring the ways in which the 50-plus-1 rule limits certain otherwise guaranteed freedoms and rights in German and European law, Marie Kronberg highlights the Verrechtlichung of soccer, its juridification, as the flipside to its accelerated commercialization since especially the 1990s (Kronberg 270)� With teams’ increasing demand for means of financial liquidity to compete internationally, the permission of clubs to branch off for-profit professional management entities from their non-profit Mutterverein has encountered increasing criticism from association members and soccer fans (Bauers and Hovemann 156)� It is towards this end that the 50-plus-1 rule was then enshrined in the charter of the Deutscher Fußball-Bund , so as to ensure that traditional associations would not fall prey to the whims of investors treating an association’s soccer team chiefly as an investment tool. The goal is to protect the game itself from shortterm market imperatives usurping long-term sportive goals and developments� This Verrechtlichung in the context of commercialization embodies the more persistent scope of Vereine in trying to codify Handlungsspielräume in a broad sense, dating back to the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries� DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 171 The grassroots efforts of founding Vereine are often overlooked, and yet they represent one of the most attractive means by which modern citizens try to navigate the underlying tension between freedom and restraint that has been unleashed as a shared social task in modernity� As individuals ponder the promise of increased freedom, they almost simultaneously realize that meaningful freedom can only be achieved in unison with others� What Vereine often pursue is the creation of Spielräume , a term that immediately calls to mind the literal playing field of soccer, but which functions metaphorically for political action as well� In his work on social norms and modern liberalism, Christoph Möllers highlights this tension between individual and collective organization� Auch körperlose Einheiten lassen sich als Akteure verstehen: Vereine, Gemeinden, Unternehmen, Staaten� Sich als neues handelndes Subjekt organisieren zu können ist eine wichtige politische Option� […] Doch ist der Freiheitsgehalt organisierten Handelns ungewiss, und diese Ungewissheit ist zentrales Thema des Liberalismus: Inwieweit erweitere »ich« meine Freiheit um den Preis, mich in eine Organisation einzugliedern? […] Organisiertheit lässt sich nicht auf Unterworfenheit unter eine Hierarchie reduzieren, sondern stiftet Möglichkeiten� (Möllers 104—105) In the rupture of modernity, individuals are propelled into the uncertainty Möllers describes here� As a modern citizen, on the one hand, I am liberated from a previously rigid social order to pursue my self-realization� On the other hand, I am left to navigate a realm of possibilities that can be overwhelming� In denaturalizing the previously held social world, the modern citizen lives in the tension of freedom and necessity� Unmasking the contingency of social norms and order is both liberation and burden, and grappling with contingency becomes one of the tasks of modern citizens� In an essay critiquing historicism as espoused by thinkers such as Leibniz, Hegel and Marx, Reinhart Koselleck draws attention to the risky nature of trying to overcome contingency, a phenomenon Koselleck diagnoses as all too prevalent in modernity� 8 On this reading, historicism goes too far in explaining away contingent historical phenomena as-almost naturalistically-necessary, in trying to turn the discipline of history into a natural science� In ways that call to mind Adorno and Horkheimer’s unmasking of the dialectics of Enlightenment, Koselleck traces how modernity tries to liberate itself from the unpredictability of contingency by virtue of ever-more astute observations of causality� And yet, while causation in nature can be observed with increasing precision, causal explanations of the social world-increasingly shaped by human free will-come up against hard limits� For Koselleck, Enlightenment and Idealism overextend themselves in trying to explain away contingency� 172 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 [G]erade das Ausräumen jeder Zufälligkeit [stellt] zu hohe Konsistenzansprüche, und zwar gerade deshalb, weil im Horizont geschichtlicher Einmaligkeit durch die Beseitigung jeden Zufalls die Zufälligkeit verabsolutiert wird� Was im Raum der vorhistorischen Geschichtsauffassung von Fortuna geleistet wurde, das wird in der Moderne zur Ideologie, die in dem Maβ zu immer neuen Manipulationen nötigt, als sie im Gewande unverrückbarer Gesetzlichkeit auftritt. (Koselleck, “Vergangene Zukunft” 175) The history of Vereine is one of navigating contingency through juridification, forming personal and collective identities in the face of novel and intimidating Handlungsspielräume opened up by the radical rethinking of social order in 18 th and 19 th century Europe� Though soccer Vereine only started developing in the latter 19 th century, their history in particular encapsulates some of the common themes in the general history of associations in Germany, and their modern fight for the soul of soccer brings to the fore many of the values proclaimed in political upheavals throughout Europe centuries ago� It is to this broader development that we now turn before exploring the developments in one Verein in particular� The history of soccer Vereine in Germany is a story of Verrechtlichung , i�e� juridification (Streinz 1), as well as one of specialization with an ironically universal reach. While narratives of modernity tend to focus heavily on the fight for and curtailments on individual and personal rights since the French Revolution, the realm of Vereinsrecht , i�e� association and club law, is often overlooked� Nevertheless, this realm of law, governing the collective right to assemble and form associations, is central to various social movements of the last two centuries� In his analysis of European law impacting soccer and Vereine in the 1990s, Rudolf Streinz summarizes the legal status of associations in the context of changing EU law� “Freilich gehört zu einer freiheitlichen Rechtsordnung auch die Wahrung und Beachtung von Freiräumen der Bürger und der von ihnen geschaffenen privaten Organisationen, auch der Sportverbände” (Streinz 96). The debate that currently brings centuries of legal development surrounding associations into focus concerns the drafting and implementation of the 50-plus- 1 rule after German soccer Vereine were allowed to outsource the management of their professional soccer teams to profit-seeking entities in 1998 (Bauers and Hovemann 156, Kronberg 270)� Looking broadly at the development of modern associations to this day, the particular case of German soccer Vereine entails a move from increased specialization of a given club’s cultural focus, which was typical for its time, to a cultural appeal of soccer so all-encompassing that it entails transnational legal and economic adaptation� The intermittent development towards specialization DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 173 might initially strike us as surprising in light of early associations’ sweeping ideals and goals� Thomas Nipperdey highlights the degree to which modern associations evolved from explicitly broadly defined groups to ones of increasing specialization in the 19 th century� The associations of broad appeal in the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries highlighted the virtue of Bildung with lofty goals of bettering mankind� “Die Vereinigung sollte ein Gegengewicht gegen die Spezialisierung des Menschen, der er in der Arbeitswelt unterliegt, darstellen� […] Der Einseitigkeit der Ausbildung sollte durch die Universalität der Bildung begegnet werden” (Nipperdey 24). Later on, starting after 1815, we observe an increasing specialization that runs parallel with explosive growth in the founding of Vereine . It is thus that we find ever more kinds of Vereine that take on more particular areas of focus, especially in the realm of culture� “Im 19� Jahrhundert wird das Leben in und mit der Kultur zu einer eigenen ‘Provinz’ des Lebens neben den Provinzen Arbeit und Politik” (Nipperdey 27)� In this period, we encounter one of the most important kinds of Vereine booming, namely the Turnverein , which later becomes the nexus of soccer and other sports clubs� As current debates surrounding soccer culminate in the defense of or reform proposals for a more effective implementation of the 50-plus-1 rule, what is at stake is not merely a purported kind of soccer, but defending the eingetragener Verein itself from imposed, non-intrinsic norms� Plenty of small-scale Vereine are able to continue doing business as usual, which is grassroots community-building on a local level, even if often tied to national governing bodies for broader networking and standardization� But as soccer has become a global business juggernaut since the 1970s and especially the 1990s, the ability of locally grounded Fuβball-Vereine to manage their global fan appeal and capital flows within conventional organizational parameters has been put to the test, and thus the laws that govern the eingetragener Verein have been revisited� Soccer Vereine may well be the most unique kind of Vereine in Germany in terms of their combination of a highly specialized cultural focus and their simultaneously broad public presence� Within German soccer Vereine , this unique combination of specialization and broad global appeal touches on the four tensions of modernity mentioned previously� From its early days, the Verein has been thought of and instituted as a liminal space that provides a Handlungsspielraum for modern citizens� With regards to the state, the Verein rests on both legal recognition and protection by the state and an element of withdrawal from and by the state� The establishment of a Verein entails its recognition as a legal person, but beyond that, the administrative execution of a Verein is largely autonomous from state intervention, protecting the hard-fought gains of the rights of assembly in the 19 th century� This dialectic between self-governance and legal recognition stands in as the concrete form of the more abstract tension 174 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 between desired freedom and the need for social order and coordination� As far as the inclusive-exclusive dialectic is concerned, the basic tension that lies at the heart of any Verein of general appeal and voluntary ascent to particular rules is magnified in the global reach of contemporary soccer Vereine � The local grounding of a club like FC Schalke 04 in the mid-size city of Gelsenkirchen stands in contrast to the global reach it has in successful seasons in Bundesliga 1 � And yet, its identity as a smaller city, working-class club is part of what appeals to Schalke fans all over the world� Especially if they are dues-paying members of the Verein , they literally have a say on how the club operates� All of this points to the more basic experience that persists in modernity-the disconnect between a new awareness of contingency in light of the “denaturalization of the social” (Möllers 68) and the difficulty of actually altering the social order� Ironically, the deconstruction of what was previously held to be necessary as contingent has the effect of making the contingency seem natural and overwhelming� Where a social order previously understood as natural becomes reconceived as contingent and thus malleable, the promise of being able to change the contingent social order for the better is rarely met, resulting in frustration about the persistence of imposed social order, in turn perceived as natural or inevitable. If part of modernity is defined by the unveiling of much of our world as more contingent than hitherto understood, then the task of the modern citizen is to scope out realms in which that contingency can begin to be tamed or channeled in one direction or another� Vereine carve out realms of Mitbestimmung , where collective action can be discerned and coordinated to reach partial victories in managing the contingent social order� Mitbestimmung is most decidedly not limited to the realm of soccer but arises as a general ideal of self-organization in Vereine of all kinds, and it has been rather well-established as a guiding principle in German politics and economics since Bismarck� It is not the first time there has been a struggle to defend Vereine in Germany� In the drawn-out period of nationalization and revolutionary zeal in German lands, the fight was for legal recognition of Vereine in the first place. Initial founding of associations took on more of a political nature than we might think of in the context of sporting clubs today, making the 19 th century one marked by waves of recognition and reactionary suppression of various kinds of associations� Especially in France, citizens often initially assembled in a more secretive manner than the publicly appealing associations that gained traction in the latter half of the 19 th century in Germany (Dann 224—225)� As with nationalization efforts, so too Germany’s boom in association founding takes off later than in neighboring countries. Efforts towards nationalization became increasingly organized following Napoleon’s defeat of Prussia in 1806� Collective political mobilization was sweeping, drawing associations from more do- DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 175 mestic spheres (reading circles, e�g�) into the political public sphere� Responses to waves of Vereinformation varied greatly by region, but for most of the 19 th century, Austro-Hungarian and Prussian responses generally set the tone of animosity and distrust between entrenched aristocracies and their nationally and democratically minded citizenries� The Hambacher Fest in 1832, largely driven by the Deutscher Preβ- und Vaterlandsverein in demand of national unification, freedom of the press, and democratic legitimation from below, effectively led to a prohibition on political associations (Düding 144), prompting a dynamic that marks the German Vereinswesen to this day-the purported apolitical nature of Vereine � In response to the repression by Prussia and other states, associations that had explicitly political aims had to find ways to present themselves as apolitical� This left two main options for politically minded associations; to resort to the form of secret societies more familiar in the 18 th century, or to found public associations under the pretense of political neutrality� For Vereine that were not political in the first place, the state’s particular repression of patriotically minded associations meant little, and so it is that we can speak of a ‘time of Vereine ’ at mid-century� Everything from Vereine for friendship, reading, agriculture and music to philanthropy, care for the poor, art, and business could be found in the 1800s (Nipperdey 2—4)� The Frankfurter Nationalversammlung enshrined the general right to found Vereine in 1849, though individual states still made attempts to reign in political associations (Hardtwig, “Verein” 823)� Though we do not see the rise of soccer Vereine at the height of this general expansion of associations, they indeed become more commonplace especially in the early 20 th century. As mainstream films such as Der ganz groβe Traum ( Lessons of a Dream, 2011) have helped to show, soccer’s initial growth in popularity encountered resistance from more established sporting activities, especially Turnen , the Germans’ favorite pastime by far in the 19 th century� Turnen -gymnastics-had become a rallying cry of German national self-understanding in the 1800s, often embedded within militarism and the vilification of neighboring France. The influence of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn ( Turnvater Jahn) on the establishment of Turnen as the German national pastime as well as its concomitant founding of countless Turnvereine cannot be overstated in its ultimate effect on German nationalization. His widely read publications on the formative role of Turnen in nurturing a sense of a German Volk played an outsize role in bringing together a budding bourgeoisie with educational institutions and nationally minded political movements (Düding 36—42). Many of the established team names still reveal that it was within Turnvereine that soccer enthusiasm initially took root, e.g TSG Hoffenheim, VfL Bochum and Wolfsburg, TSV 1860 München, even if it was met with suspicion. For many teams, the friction between Turnen and soccer resulted in the exodus of soccer players who would 176 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 then found the many “FCs” that adorn countless soccer clubs’ names to this day, e�g� 1� FC Köln, FC Schalke 04, FC St� Pauli, and the team so many German soccer fans have a love-hate relationship with, FC Bayern München. The founding of the Deutscher Fuβball-Bund (the German Soccer Federation) in 1900 played its part in fostering a manifold increase in soccer club founding, leading to an eleven-fold increase in the number of soccer associations between 1904 and 1914, and a twenty-fold increase in individual members� And yet, it still paled in comparison to membership in the Deutsche Turnerschaft , the main umbrella organization for gymnastics (Eisenberg 183—184)� Firmly established and increasing in popularity by the end of World War II, soccer in Germany was able to maintain rather consistent organizational patterns well into the 1960s� As with its general growth in Germany, so too did German soccer lag behind England in terms of professionalization� Whereas efforts towards professionalization of soccer-the outright paying of players for matches, compensating for missed work, luring players away from other teams-took root in the late 1800s in England (Goldblatt 45—49, 218), partial player compensation was only permitted in Germany starting in 1949, and it was limited to 320 DM per month (Nagel and Pahl 126, Zeyringer 148)� As we will look at more closely in the case of FC St� Pauli, clubs were able to manage their financial matters through membership dues and ticket sales revenues. That begins to dramatically change in the 1970s, urging the rethinking of financial operations for a pastime with growing national and international reach� While no two Vereine share the same history, most soccer Vereine in Germany-even the most successful teams-trace their roots to a rather limited, local founding� We can picture this as a fairly idealized, potentially romanticized moment in which a group of friends or co-workers decide to establish a dedicated club to foster engagement with a leisure time passion for the community at large, say in the latter quarter of the 19 th century� This would be the case for any kind of Verein , whether a patriotic one, a singing club, an agricultural club, or research network� Said founders would agree upon shared values and visions, rules for membership and its revocation, manners of dues-collecting, and many more minutiae, laying out such details in a Vereinssatzung , a club charter� As soccer kept growing in popularity in Germany, from the Industrial Revolution through the World Wars and beyond, the business of soccer-especially as it went global with the European and global organizational structures UEFA and FIFA-became an essential part of the Vereine , for better or worse� For many local clubs at the amateur level, the structure of the romanticized local collective can largely be maintained to this day� But for professional teams in the top flights of league play in Germany, sportive success hinges in part on increasing capital flows. In order to facilitate capital influx, almost all teams have at least DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 177 been tempted to create an additional legal entity unrestrained by the non-profit principles of an eingetragener Verein � With the notable exception of a few teams in the Bundesliga (RB Leipzig, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, and VfL Wolfsburg), most successful clubs in the top two flights of league play have roots in the late 19 th and early 20 th century� Whether initially formed as an outright Fuβball-Club or as part of a larger Turnverein , top-tier clubs have a long history as a local association that was founded with the rather narrow mission of organizing and supporting the game of soccer� Of the aforementioned three clubs that pose exceptions to this rule, RB Leipzig stands out as the most untraditional club, infamous for its top-down influx of corporate money that spurred its accelerated rise from amateur levels to participation in the highest level of international competition, the UEFA Champions League. Leverkusen and Wolfsburg figure as remnants of kinds of clubs that used to be more common, namely factory teams, often founded during industrialization phases in the early 20 th century, but also in the GDR� When we see highly organized fan blocks raising slogans during game broadcasts, the sentiments expressed usually stem from fan bases defending the more traditional form of soccer Vereine , namely the so-called eingetragener Verein (hence, the abbreviation “e�V�” that is technically part of each club’s legal name, found in each team’s charter)� At the writing of this article, German fans can claim victory in expressing their frustrations in response to recent efforts by the Deutsche Fuβball Liga (the organizing body of the top two flights of the Bundesliga ) to seek increased capital flows in the form of investing partnerships (“DFL lässt Pläne für Investoren-Einstieg fallen”). After weeks of coordinated protest efforts that resulted in long delays of games, the DFL backed out of negotiations with investors� 9 As soccer Vereine find themselves at the nexus of local civic engagement and global business, club membership appears as engaged as ever in shaping how their Verein is operated and what values it stands for� What makes this glocal tightrope walk unique is the fact that German soccer Vereine seem to be some of the very few-if not only-global institutions capable of bridging what has been called a legitimacy deficit in other contexts. 10 As local sites of Mitbestimmung that provide members a sense of agency, soccer Vereine assume a unique position in navigating modernity’s tensions while trying to salvage said agency in protected Handlungsspielräume � While the ideal of Mitbestimmung is constantly invoked by fan displays in stadiums, as well as in protest actions, it is so frequently invoked precisely because it is perceived to be under attack from outside (corporate) forces� Thus, it cannot be claimed that Mitbestimmung is simply a given in top-tier German soccer clubs. Rather, the fight for it shows that it 178 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 stands on shaky ground and merits efforts to defend this ideal that is so central to Vereine in general� While German soccer manages to enable fan Mitbestimmung to a greater degree than other Big 5 soccer leagues, even within Germany we can see a plurality of ways in which Mitbestimmung is either undermined or, in turn, pursued in creative new ways� Most clubs in the Bundesliga now have some form of hybrid organizational structure in which the professional soccer club is managed separately from the mother Verein � With the two prominent exceptions of VfL Wolfsburg and Bayer 04 Leverkusen, all other top clubs arose out of a traditional eingetragener Verein � But with the global commercialization of the sport in the 1990s, most clubs have come to opt for an organizational structure that blends corporate management forms with partial say for the traditional mother Verein � One club in particular stands out for finding its home in a sort of liminal space between traditional Verein and global success, often knocking on the door of top-flight promotion but remaining in Bundesliga 2 , nevertheless establishing an enormous global fan base: FC St� Pauli 1910 e� V�� While its identity is rather unique, the roots and evolution of the club are representative of how soccer clubs have generally developed, changed, and maintained some core identity over the last century� Known as a Kultclub with a cult following marked by leftist political sympathies and community engagement beyond the sport of soccer, St� Pauli has certainly not been immune to other prevailing political ideologies and financial tensions since its quasi-official founding in 1910. Arising within the pre-existing Turnverein St. Pauli und vor dem Dammthore , founded in 1860, the frictions typical of the late 1800s also arose between the traditional gymnasts of the Verein and those who were drawn to the exciting new game of soccer� Though its founding year is most prominently listed as 1910, it is not until 1924 that the Fuβballverein has its true, separate founding� 11 In its first five decades of existence, St. Pauli’s Turnverein is marked by typical developments and ideals for its time� Its earliest charter highlights the more holistic ideals of self-governance and the goal of nurturing “geistliche und sittliche Bildung” and physical strength ( Gesetze und Turnordnung 3)� Emblematic of the turn from earlier secret societies to explicitly public-facing Vereine , the team’s 1860 charter welcomes “alle Freunde des Turnens” (3) to become members of the club� At the same time, the necessity of limitations and rules becomes apparent in its founding document, some of which concern members’ behavior in public and the damage it might cause to the reputation of the club� The main offenses outlined in this early charter concerned unpaid dues and “unwürdiges Betragen in der Öffentlichkeit,” the latter of which highlights its early members’ keen awareness of the public role such a Verein takes on� Though technically apolitical, the club’s charter also draws on another topic that will become hotly DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 179 contested in the political redefinition of modern Germany, namely the role of representation in the public sphere� At this time, more than a decade after the failed revolution of 1848, the growing bourgeoisie and citizenry is still very much at odds with and failing to topple the embedded aristocracy that still shapes German lands� And while political parties only become more established-both institutionally and as a term distinct from Vereine 12 -in the 1860s, Vereine of all sorts had begun practicing representation on a small scale, but assuming ever greater public relevance� With the club’s updated name and charter in 1903, we see the additional element of patriotic ideals codified in the team’s charter. The ideals of physical Bildung were now supplemented with nurturing a “vaterländischen Sinn” among the club’s gymnasts (Satzungen des Hamburg-St� Pauli Turnvereins 3)� While patriotic and nationalist sentiment had long been driving factors in gymnastics clubs before this time, it is worth noting the shift in rhetoric encountered in these founding documents� After broadly conceived Vereine of the first half of the 19 th century encountered fierce political repression, they distanced themselves from outright political activity� Nationalism initially driven by liberalizing tendencies to overthrow aristocratic and undemocratic structures becomes muted, only to return as part of the new status quo after national unification in 1871. As Krüger (423) notes in his study of the gymnastics movement in the period of forming the German Reich, Turnvereine officially maintained apolitical identities in their founding documents, and yet they simultaneously assimilated to the ruling military class’s social norms� 13 Though this may come across as political opportunism, it is still in line with the underlying motivations for national unification across politically splintered German-speaking lands throughout the 19 th century� And so, the Hamburg-St. Pauli Turnverein of 1903 took part in the maneuvering of its identity in a way that was typical of its time� It perpetuated the growing national pride of the period while explicitly distancing itself from “politische Parteibestrebungen,” doing so by virtue of including in its founding documents the basic law of the national umbrella organization for gymnastics, the Deutsche Turnerschaft (Satzungen des Hamburg-St� Pauli Turnvereins 36—40)� While it was the nationalist ambitions that were deemed political and prompted political retaliation earlier in the century, once nationalization has been achieved, Vereine were able to glance over nationalist sentiment as an apolitical matter� At this point in time, Turnen was still without a doubt the Germans’ national sport and the impact of its organization in Vereine and umbrella organizations on nationalization efforts in the 19 th century is hard to underestimate� 14 Gymnastics continued to set the tone for physical activity in German Vereine in the early 1900s, but soccer continued to gain ground while rubbing against 180 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 the establishment� In an era marked by vigorous national pride across Europe, soccer faced resistance in Germany, especially since it hailed from global rival England� Nevertheless, people voted with their feet and soccer’s popularity was soon undeniable� Within German Turnvereine , other kinds of ballsports were played, and for a time, soccer competed with other, supposedly ‘more German’ sports, such as Faustball, Schlagball , or Schleuderball (Nagel and Pahl 28)� Here, too, St� Pauli did not buck the trend, but developed along similar lines as other Turnvereine at the time� Those clubs often created game divisions in which gymnasts could also engage in team sports in addition to their choreographed gymnastics routines� Whereas gymnastics had been well organized at a national level since around 1848, 15 soccer largely operated at the regional level at the turn of the century, with smaller leagues scattered throughout Germany� National championships began in 1903, shortly after the founding of soccer’s umbrella organization, the Deutscher Fuβball-Bund , but Germany did not see national league play until the founding of the Bundesliga in 1963� For this first stretch of St. Pauli’s existence as a soccer club, we can summarily say that its makeup and development was representative for its time� The club emerged out of a pre-existing Turnverein where the appearance of soccer in Germany was met with both excitement and resistance� Soccer grew in popularity and local league play begins nurturing rivalries with similarly situated clubs, such as the Hamburger Sportverein and Holstein Kiel , two teams with whom St� Pauli is competing for first place in Bundesliga 2 at the writing of this article� Ultimately, soccer took over the role as national pastime in Germany, particularly after the end of World War I, at which point the sport had even been adopted by the military� The period of National Socialism marks a large rupture in Germany’s emerging tradition of Vereine , affecting soccer Vereine as much as any other kind of Verein. Within a year of Hitler’s seizing of power, the democratic practices carried out in Vereine big and small make way for the Führerprinzip , meaning that heads of Vereine were no longer elected by members, as had been standard practice, but rather that a single leader was understood to be consented to (Nagel and Pahl 70)� This single leader, in turn, was always exposed to the arbitrary whims of local NSDAP leaders. On this front, St. Pauli’s popular “Kein Fuβball den Faschisten” jerseys do not seem to line up with the club’s history during the Nazi period� Aside from minor formalities in which clubs could hesitate to comply with Nazi policy, St� Pauli fell in line with party demands� 16 League play largely continued during the war, though with obvious impact on teams’ abilities to keep their starting eleven intact� In the immediate postwar period, St� Pauli managed to strike gold in terms of sporting success, in part due to DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 181 one player’s ties to the talented pool of players from Dresdner SC (Nagel and Pahl 92)� Leading all the way to the 1960s, the basic organizational and financial structure of FC St� Pauli remained remarkably simple, as did the structures of most soccer teams at the time� The club was made up of dues-paying members, and with stadiums drawing increasingly large crowds, teams were able to count on revenue from ticket sales to pad a Verein’s bottom line� Up until the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963, and in rather stark contrast to much earlier debates and developments in England, 17 German soccer was still organized largely as an amateur sport, even if clubs were allowed to pay players up to 320 DM per month starting in 1949� 18 While not an insignificant sum at the time, such pay was conceived of as compensation for missed income from work� It obviously pales in comparison to the salaries of professionals today� But even in postwar Germany, soccer remained an amateur sport for nearly two decades� With such paltry sums of money, a Verein’s finances remained correspondingly humble and did not require great arithmetic prowess� The period from the 1960s to 1980s is marked by one of countless close calls for St� Pauli, frequently on the verge of great success, then stumbling before the proverbial finish line, whether in league or cup play. It also marks the period in which the club’s distinct modern identity as cult club took real root in light of commercial cross-pressures that arose from soccer’s continuous rise in global popularity and financial growth. With the death of long-time president Wilhelm Koch and the election of Ernst Schacht, a new era of presidential leadership began in 1970� Schacht was a wealthy banker from Hamburg, someone able to help the club financially-not only with his experience in banking, but with occasional investments of his own private wealth to keep the club afloat (Nagel and Pahl 196-217)� With the increase in salaries for players and rising travel expenses as a result of professionalization and national league play that began in the 1960s, operating budgets in German soccer began to balloon, and so did soccer’s popularity and its ability to bring in more revenue� Gone were the days in which membership dues and ticket sales sufficed to cover a professional club’s expenses� Advertising was not completely new to clubs like St� Pauli at the time but had actually begun in their 20-year Festschrift in 1930� With the advent of selling ad space on jerseys in 1973 by Eintracht Braunschweig, the floodgates of advertising on billboards, scoreboards, and in publications were opened� To this day, St. Pauli fights to maintain some level of restraint when it comes to the overstimulation brought on by advertising� Most impressively, the club refuses to sell the naming rights to its most recent stadium, a practice that has become so established that it is second nature in professional soccer, as fans often still 182 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 call the stadium by its traditional name, ignoring the corporate branding of a stadium� So far, the Millerntor stadium is still simply the Millerntor. 19 When we think of the history of soccer Vereine as a history of Verrechtlichung , this becomes particularly apparent in the increasing complexity encountered in ways that professional teams organize their management and in the corresponding increase in length of associations’ charters� For FC St� Pauli, 1979 marks a watershed year in terms of financial management. While the team finished sixth in Bundesliga 2 , the Deutscher Fuβball-Bund withheld the necessary license for St. Pauli to keep playing in the league, citing financial insolvency of the club. The combination of historically low game attendance and financial reliance on last-minute bailouts by single investors was deemed unsustainable by the DFB , pushing St� Pauli into the amateur ranks of the Regionalliga � 20 As a professional club with a strong local grounding, St� Pauli at this time was navigating its way in the emerging world of European professional soccer� While local businessmen were able to enhance the club’s financial standing at first, by the end of the 1970s, they seemed to be reaching their own limits� The need arose to find sustainable funding models that do not fall apart from decreased ticket sales alone� One measure taken by St� Pauli that fed into the complex Verrechtlichung of traditional Vereine is the founding of a Förderverein , a non-profit financial supporters’ club that circumnavigated restrictions placed on the club by the German Finanzamt � The Förderverein allowed a handful of generous donors to provide zero-interest loans to St� Pauli in order to lure in quality players (and thus more fans to the stadium) during fairly desperate times for the club� Though certainly a stop-gap measure at the time, the club now more formally nurtures strong ties to a similar group, the Abteilung Fördernde Mitglieder , codifying a specific role for it within the club’s current charter. Where the Förderverein of the early 1980s raised money as part of a complex funding mechanism for player recruitment, the modern AFM , founded in 1999, supports youth development and efforts of inclusion and equity ( Abteilungsordnung der AFM 2). Its specific inclusion in the club’s charter again highlights the increasing Verrechtlichung of modern Vereine ( Satzung - FC St. Pauli von 1910 e.V. 27—28) . Though modern club charters are still impressive in their relative brevity, they are nevertheless a far cry from the early charters of many clubs’ gymnastics club predecessors� Where the 1860 charter of the Turnverein in St. Pauli und vor dem Dammthore runs a mere thirteen pages and outlines minute details of gymnastics meets and practices, the 2022 charter of FC St� Pauli is a good thirty pages long and reads increasingly as a legalistic document that spells out the club’s complex inner workings� St. Pauli’s ability to balance the financialization of professional soccer with grassroots fan support is a constant work in progress, and it is what arguably DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 183 draws even a strong international following, which is quite rare for a club that usually plays in the second tier of German soccer� Sportive success is not possible without a sustainably high level of revenue, and yet it is often what soccer fans dream of� St� Pauli’s current stability stems in part from the time period following the dismal phase of fiscal insolvency. To a certain degree, St. Pauli’s general stability also owes to its unique identity as a particularly leftist club engaged in social justice efforts. St. Pauli logos and merchandise stand in for much more than mere sportive support for their men’s soccer team� While there can be no roadmap to similar success, a number of factors both local and global came together in the 1980s that allowed St� Pauli to carve out a distinct culture and identity that persists to this day� Consistent local involvement in its part of town helped nurture a sustainable local fan base that also became both politically vocal and welcoming in the 1980s and 1990s. Despite its truly dismal financial situation and inability to find creditors in the early 1980s, a mix of some sportive success and some sportive slip-ups by its local rival Hamburger Sport-Verein nudged some fans to test their allegiance to HSV� Flare-ups of neo-Nazi rhetoric and violence at HSV games contributed their part to the same dynamic� Not least of all, the changing media landscape (increasing coverage on cable TV) also thrives more on the narratives of the ‘crazy’ team from the notorious part of town in Hamburg. Volker Ippig plays a particularly fitting role in the late 1980s. Having worked in developmental aid in Latin America and himself a participant in the local squatting scene in the 1980s, it is all too fitting that the St. Pauli goalkeeper co-authored what is widely considered to be the first anti-racist manifesto by a team and its fans� 21 St� Pauli certainly enjoys a unique identity and appeal today, and yet, the legalistic framework within which it operates is common to almost all German soccer clubs, at least in their origins� Thus, while St� Pauli stands out as a club with relative sporting success coupled with a level of fan engagement that is notably not business as usual, other fan bases could strive for a similar culture of Mitbestimmung in their clubs. It is the corporate influence on the most successful clubs that appear as the greatest threat to such cultures of engagement� What makes St� Pauli so hard for other fans to hate is the fact that the club seems to find a unique balance between its expectations for sportive success and the desire for a purportedly pure game that does not fall prey to profit-making imperatives� The underlying values that guide St� Pauli’s balancing act are indeed shared by almost all other teams’ fans� The club embodies love of the sport that also infuses the surrounding community (both more literally in St� Pauli itself as well as the virtual global community of fans) with joy and support� Having developed out of an initial process of specialization in the 1800s, from Vereine with broadly idealistic goals regarding character formation to 184 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Turnvereine and then to Fuβballvereine , modern professional soccer Vereine occupy a unique space in which fans can live out the modern tensions between self-governance and legal protection by a state (or, increasingly, a union of states), between individual freedom and collective restraint, between inclusivity and exclusivity, and ultimately between contingency and necessity� All of these tensions in turn thrive on the desire to bridge the local and the global, to be grounded in something in one’s own neighborhood that has a global impact� Scarcely a club seems to strike this balance as well as St� Pauli currently does, all the while offering fans a strong sense of Mitbestimmung and Teilhabe , of having a say in how things operate� Just as the ultimately contingent rules of a given game or sport define the actual Spielfeld or Spielraum , the legal form in which associations and clubs organize themselves comes to create Handlungsspielräume in which fans and club members learn to operate, learn to find their voice, and find actions that express their wills. As one of only two leagues among Europe’s “Big 5” whose club governance structure is still largely driven by club members (Sanchez et al� 358), Germany’s soccer clubs uniquely combine ideals of self-governance and collective organization within contingent political-legal structures� Over and against the media-inspired identification with the German national soccer teams, the fandom we encounter surrounding traditional soccer Vereine fosters a richer identity of citizenship and participation� Whereas national team fandom ebbs and flows with biannual tournament hype, fan identification with a club is more consistently wedded to the practice of civic engagement in a seemingly trivial yet practical sense� It fosters Mitbestimmung and Teilhabe for individual members and fans that come together and shape the culture of a given team� In this basic form, as the culture surrounding a leisure time activity that also draws in stupendous amounts of revenue, fan culture is largely apolitical, but it puts into practice the modern task of navigating the Handlungsspielräume of public, political, and economic life� In the face of daunting contingency and dizzying opportunities for growth and self-realization, German soccer Vereine uniquely provide a space in which fans feel an otherwise rare sense of shaping something larger than themselves� In this way, it may very well be a modern form of religion, but less in a sense of idolizing and worship than as a civic religion delimiting earthly parameters for contingently chosen values and norms� The question arises as to just how Mitbestimmung is shaped for and by club supporters of German teams, and this takes many shapes� Traditionally, it is conceived as dues-paying members having a vote on the election of leadership at annual members’ conventions� However, given the current transformation of club management structures, for most top-flight clubs, this direct say is be- DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 185 ing undermined as teams piece together corporate governance structures with traditional club structures, often turning membership into a commodified sense of belonging with no actual say in who runs the club� Thus, a member of FC Bayern München, for example, may call themselves a member, but have no say on managerial decision-making� Members of FC Schalke 04, by contrast, have a vote at their annual members’ meeting, where the board of directors might be elected or amendments to the club charter are voted on� 22 While German soccer clubs lead the way in maintaining a culture of Mitbestimmung , the managerial financial pressure continues to chip away at it as global capital flows necessary for international success are much more highly concentrated than traditional membership dues and ticket sale revenues� Many fans fight to defend this ideal within clubs but in order to find other ways of having a say in team and stadium culture, many fan bases have taken to the founding of another kind of Verein , namely Fanprojekte (Fritz)� These associations are created as an intermediary between fan groups and the club, often coordinating policies and events in the team’s stadium, for example� Many Fanprojekte also engage in outreach efforts in their locality, offering after-school and community-building programming. The fight for Mitbestimmung thus hinges on understandings of how exactly a sense of meaningful Mitbestimmung is achieved-whether it is primarily through traditional club membership and voting privileges, through financial support of the team and corporate sponsorship, through grassroots engagement in Fanprojekte , or the founding of yet other forms of collectives that dedicate themselves to nurturing particular values and ideals carried out in the community or the stadium (Doidge et al� 165)� By its nature of being contained within contingent limits on both the literal and symbolic playing field, all kinds of political, subcultural, or even hegemonic norms can easily find their way into any Verein’s particular culture� While St� Pauli might currently be a trailblazer in terms of inspiring a culture of committing to inclusive values, we just as often encounter masculine violence in soccer fan cultures around the world� 23 The kind of identity fostered by fandom and membership in a soccer Verein is largely not one that is defined in a political or identitarian sense, as clearly belonging to an in-group or out-group, but rather an identity of putting into practice the navigation of modernity’s tensions� It concerns the practical ability to exist within the tensions of modernity: to both include and demarcate; to embrace contingency and endure necessity; to self-govern and acknowledge higher earthly forces; to strive for self-realization and come up against its social limits� 186 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Notes 1 In the 2023-24 season, FC Bayern München’s eleven-year reign as champion came to an end as Bayer 04 Leverkusen secured the title for the first time. 2 I should note from the outset that this project is strictly focused on the fandom as carried out by fans of club teams, not the German national team� This is for the rather simple reason that fandom as exhibited by club fans is immensely more consistent and involved over time� Arguably, the German national team itself garners the largest single pool of fans, but the national team has no formal tie-in to the fans, unlike club teams� The euphoria for the national team peaks every two years for a major tournament, but the national team does not have shared governance structures, membership, or even a clearly defined ‘home’. For more on national team identification, see Zambon (119—143)� 3 Throughout this essay, I end up switching back and forth between the German term Verein and the English term “association”� Implicit in my word choice is whether I am speaking more narrowly about German associations or associations more broadly� 4 See, for example, Dann (229) on the lacuna in historical research on the broad development of Vereine , especially leading up to German unification in 1871� 5 This idea is taken from Jürgen Habermas, who in turn picks up on Marx’ analysis of capitalist modernity. Habermas is chiefly concerned with the ways in which economic imperatives usurp deeply seated norms that guide communicative action, which he equates with the lifeworld, the background realm of often implicitly agreed-upon norms that make effective communication possible in the first place. See Habermas ( Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns , Bd� 2, 17—295)� 6 Obviously, these two do not always go hand in hand� The active fan and member involvement focused on in this piece is reserved for actual dues-paying members of clubs who prioritize participating in annual meetings and elections� 7 As outlined by Roland Robertson since the 1990s, glocalization describes the two-fold movement by which some cultural phenomena become both more homogenized in the process of Western-dominated globalization and simultaneously maintain or strengthen some local particularity� It is my contention that German soccer is a cultural product that is uniquely positioned within this two-fold movement of globalization and particularization, and that this unique dynamic is also a national one that we can observe in particular lucidity in Germany� See, for example, Robertson (7—8)� DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 Glocal yet National-German Soccer Culture, Identity, and Vereinsgeschichte 187 8 As a historian, Koselleck is primarily invested in identifying problematic tendencies within prevalent theories of historiography, but we can understand this critique as applicable to almost any progressivist understanding of history� On Koselleck’s account, the very notion of historical progress emerges in modernity in the first place. 9 Some of the specific complaints brought up by fans concern (1) the general shift towards profit-orientation at the expense of local custom and tradition entailed by a culture of greater capital investment, (2) the pressure to disperse game times (for greater TV reach) not conducive to fans’ work schedules, (3) the sweeping culture of advertising and naming rights that ignore local customs (especially with regard to stadium naming rights)� 10 This term is most often invoked in the context of European Union politics and describes the degree to which the European Union struggles to convince the various member states’ citizens of the overlapping democratic legitimacy of its institutions. This deficit is often already felt at the national level but increases at the multinational level� See Habermas ( Ach, Europa )� 11 The year 1910 is most frequently invoked, as this was the year in which the soccer players within the larger Turnverein created a committee dedicated to soccer� The goal of forming this subcommittee was to gain acceptance into the local league in order to play in more competitive matches with other soccer teams� See Nagel and Pahl (39—42)� The request for admittance to the Norddeutscher Fuβball-Verband was initially rejected, as the league required application by a larger Spielabteilung , not just a subcommittee of the Verein � The Hamburg-St� Pauli Turnverein indeed followed suit, had their entire games division apply for admittance to the league, and it was thus that the precursor to today’s FC St. Pauli partook in its first league games. The final split from the Turnverein followed in 1924, when the Deutsche Turnerschaft , Germany’s umbrella gymnastics organization, sought to purify itself of the game of soccer and forbade its member in playing in games and sports� This almost certainly accelerated soccer’s ascendancy in popularity, granting gymnastics an ever-shrinking backseat in national popularity� 12 On the growing differentiation of political parties from political Vereine , see Hardtwig (“Verein” 812)� Concerning representation, see Nipperdey (5—7)� 13 “Die sich aus bürgerlichen Mittel- und Unterschichten rekrutierenden Turner und Turnvereine, die vor 1848 die politische Seite der Turn- und Nationalbewegung akzentuiert hatten, distanzierten sich seit dem Reichsgründungsjahrzehnt von der ‘Politik’ und versuchten das ‘Turnen’ als Inhalt und Begriff einer breiten, nationalen Volkskultur des Körpers und der Bewegung 188 Alex Holznienkemper DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0009 zu institutionalisieren. […]. [Es] vollzog sich eine Assimilation des Bürgertums an den Verhaltenskodex des preuβischen Militäradels” (Krüger 423). 14 For greater detail on the history of Turnvereine and nationalization, see Krüger as well as Düding (301—312). 15 Early on, there were two competing entities, the Deutscher Turnerbund and the Demokratischer Turnerbund , both founded around the time of the 1848 Revolution� About twenty years later, the Deutsche Turnerschaft was founded and set the tone for many years to come (Düding 305—308). 16 For example, St� Pauli did not immediately exclude Jews from club membership� Certain other teams, notoriously in southern Germany, were more proactive in pushing the nationalist agenda within their clubs� See Nagel and Pahl (70) as well as Viñas and Parra (35—46)� 17 In England, debates around amateurism and professionalization were already in full force in the late 1800s� Germany lags behind in this development by an astonishing fifty-plus years. For a more detailed discussion, see Zeyringer (145—154)� 18 This is when the DFB implemented the Vertragsspielerstatut (Nagel and Pahl 126)� 19 On these various advertising fronts, see the larger history spelled out in Nagel and Pahl (54—56, 210, 380—381)� 20 For an overview of the ups and downs of the 1970s, both in terms of sportive success and financial mismanagement, see Nagel and Pahl (196—216). 21 This was in response to racist remarks uttered by St� Pauli’s own fans against Nürnberg’s player Souleyman Sane at the beginning of the 1989/ 90 season (Nagel and Pahl 278)� 22 For a systematic analysis of ways in which Mitbestimmung materializes, see Bauers et al� (“Partizipation”)� 23 Whether or not such violence emanates from dues-paying, engaged members, is another question and would be an interesting path of inquiry� But regardless of pertinent data, the phenomenon of football as a mass gathering still seems to draw such destructive tendencies in addition to whatever constructive social cohesion it might foster� Works Cited Abteilungsordnung der Abteilung Fördernde Mitglieder (AFM) im FC St. Pauli von 1910 e.V. Hamburg, 1 October 2020� “DFL lässt Pläne für Investoren-Einstieg fallen.” Tagesschau. 21 February 2024. 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