became the epicentre of an emerging youth music scene. The new generation of young people was not the ‘ruins’ generation and it wanted to have a good time. It was then, in the 1950s, that the first youth styles surfaced, as a result of their flourishing in Britain and – in particular – the rise of rock’n’roll. In Hamburg two antithetical cultures were formed around music – the true catalyst for youth culture in those years: the ‘rockers’ and the ‘Exis’.2
Relatedly the district’s evolution after the war is crucial in order to understand FC Sankt Pauli’s more recent history. It was in the postwar period that Wilhelm Koch became one of football’s main promoters in the city. Gradually the club started its activities again. Thanks to hundreds of volunteers’ great efforts the stadium was restored in record time. Therefore, on 17 November 1946, St. Pauli reopened its pitch, playing a friendly against Schalke 04 in front of 30,000 spectators. The match ended with a 1–0 home victory.
The team returned to competitive football in the 1946–7 season, playing in the Hamburg districts’ league – a tournament overseen by the British forces occupying the city. Months later, St. Pauli participated in the Oberliga Nord, a newly created competition. Its start to the season could not have been better. The team had a string of good matches that produced these dizzying statistics: 22 wins, two draws and only three defeats. Despite this good performance, St. Pauli lost out on the title on goal difference to its nearest rival: Hamburg SC. Its 1–0 home win was not enough to make up for its previous 0–2 defeat. As a result, one goal separated ‘the boys in brown’ from the title. Despite this disappointment, that team would be remembered by the nickname Die Wunder-Elf (‘The Magnificent Eleven’).
Coming second in the Oberliga Nord enabled the club to qualify for the first national tournament held since the end of the war. On 17 July 1948, amid the political crisis caused by the Soviet blockade of Berlin, St. Pauli went onto the turf of the Berlin Olympic Stadium to play in the cup quarter-finals against SG Union Oberschöneweide – the name then for today’s Union Berlin between 1948 and 1951. Before 80,000 fans Die Wunder-Elf taught the Berliners a lesson with its commanding play. This was demonstrated by the final score of 7–0 to St. Pauli (which included a hat trick by its right midfielder Heinrich Schaffer and two more by centre-forward Fritz Machate, Schaffer’s former teammate at Dresdner SC before the war).
In the semi-final St. Pauli came up against 1. FC Nürnberg in a match full of epic moments – at the Neckar-Stadion in Mannheim on 25 July 1948. Even though at half time the Hamburg team was losing 0–2, in the second half it came back to draw – thanks to goals by Heinz ‘ Tute’ Lehmann and Fritz Machate. In extra time, however, a golden volley by Hans Pöschl dashed the sanktpaulianers’ hopes.
Despite the result, Die Wunder-Elf put St. Pauli at the centre of the German football map. The face of the team was the aforementioned Karl Miller, a footballer born in Hamburg’s Neustadt district and butcher’s son. Despite making his debut with the brown-and-white squad during the war, Miller played with Dresdner SC, a team with which he won two Tschammer-pokals – the original name for the DFB-Pokal (DFB Cup) – in 1941 and 1942. Once the war ended, Miller returned to St. Pauli, as well as to his father’s shop in Wexstrasse. His return to the shop must be factored in to understand the fine football played by that incredible team. In a period of scarcity Miller offered his teammates extra portions of meat to compensate for their deficient diets. This, together with the security provided by the British occupation of the city at the end of the war, encouraged footballers such as Helmut Schön, Alfred ‘Coppi’ Beck, Hans Appel and Willi Thiele to play for St. Pauli. Sausages, therefore, were one of the factors that help understand the success of the late 1940s’ historic team.
After reaching the semi-final, Die Wunder-Elf continued to make history by qualifying for the national championship in each of the following four seasons. Indeed, in the 1948–9 season FC St. Pauli was once again Oberliga Nord runner up. In the first of those years, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was created, officially sanctioning a division that would last until reunification in 1990.
The 1950–1 season coincided with the end of rationing, which had been in effect since 1938. Now the German championship group was split into two. The winners of each group would play each other in the final to win the title. That year St. Pauli ended last in its group and therefore had to play the following season in the Oberliga Nord. The team was greatly disappointed when it came third and missed going back up a division. Just before, Miller had left the club, and, at the age of 37, retired from professional football. That was a turning point in the club’s history. The Die Wunder-Elf’s glory days had come to an end. Despite the club’s decline, the players achieved one more important triumph. Thanks to their game, local residents came closer to the club, allowing the club to put down roots in the neighbourhood.
The 1950s, when the FRG joined NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and triggered the signing of the Warsaw Pact, ended with a golden climax. In the summer of 1959 the Millerntor stadium hosted a unique game, pitching players from several Hamburg clubs against Santos FC. The latter, Brazilian, team was doing its first European tour that year in which it played 22 matches in nine different countries. Throughout the tour the alvinegro praiano (black and white beach) team netted a record 78 goals. The club’s main forward, with 28 goals, was a young man aged 17 who months earlier had been crowned world champion in Sweden: Edson Arantes do Nascimento, otherwise known as Pelé. Yes, on 11 June 1959 Pelé went on to the turf to take on a mix of Hanseatic players from clubs like Altona 93 or SC Concordia von 1907. That day, around 15,000 spectators enjoyed the Brazilians’ game and their numerous goals. The local team brought together Banse, Martens, Herder, Boekenberg, Mueller, Vormelker, Sanmann, Gronau, Gorska, Voss and Pörsche. That night Pelé scored Santos’ first goal in the seventh minute. The others were by Coutinho (who scored a hat trick) and Dorval (who netted two).
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1. The original, a waltz composed by Ralph Arthur Roberts in 1912, described the debauchery that took place in the Reeperbahn at night. In 1954 Hans Alber starred in a film of the same name directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner, which helped popularise the song.
2. Emerging in the 1950s, the Exis took their name from the existentialist movement. They were characterised as wearing black clothes, turtle-necked sweaters and long scarves. They liked smoking Gauloises-brand cigarettes and reading French writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.
6
The New Millerntor Stadium
In the 1960s the club went through several changes while the league system was being restructured. The most important, beyond any doubt, was the building of its new stadium. In 1963 Hamburg hosted, as it had done ten years earlier, a new edition of the Internationale Gartenschau Ausstellum (International Gardening Exhibition). To accommodate the exhibition grounds the Town Hall requisitioned the old St. Pauli stadium – built in 1946 and located opposite the old fire station. In exchange, the municipal authorities backed the construction of a new sports complex to be located a few hundred metres from the old stadium. This would be in the Heiligengeistfeld, FC St. Pauli’s historic epicentre, although moving the stadium to a municipal park elsewhere in the city had been considered at the beginning.
By 1960, work had started on a venue with a capacity of 32,000 spectators, later reduced to 20,269. The reduction was due to the pitch’s lack of a drainage system, leading to a series of interventions that did not end until the stadium’s renovation in 2007. Despite these hindrances, FC St. Pauli’s new Millerntor stadium was eventually unveiled on 29 July 1961. This was for a friendly match in which the braun-weiss team played the Bulgarian CDNA Sofia (later CSKA Sofia), with the home side winning 7–4.
At that time the Millerntor stadium was the most
