The Museum: Five Months On

By Sönke. First published by Yorkshire St. Pauli in Weisse Rose 14 / April 2013.

In the January issue of Weisse Rose, I covered a lot of the basics of this project. So where are we now, five months later?

One fact we’ve realised only recently: it seems to be the biggest voluntary project ever started at FCSP, considering both the funding and the amount of voluntary work required. I’m not counting Viva Con Agua here, which is much more loosely connected. Thus, it’s no surprise that the first six months were mostly spent with creating work-groups and other internal organisational work, building a network with people and institutions both within the club and outside, writing a business plan, introducing the project to various key groups, basically constructing a basis from which to operate.

This internal work is still going on, but 1910eV is getting more and more “visible” to the public. We started a series of events marking the 25th anniversary of the promotion to Bundesliga 1 in 1988, which was a milestone in the formation of the “modern” FCSP and its supporter’s base.
A tiny bit of history for those not in the know: The team of 1988 was no ordinary one – almost all of the players were born and bred in Hamburg or the surrounding areas, many knew each other from youth teams and there was an extraordinarily strong bond between players and supporters, as many actual friends of the players were on the terraces. Their goalkeeper Volker Ippig had strong links to the squatters of the Hafenstraße (where he lived for a couple of weeks) and took a break from professional football soon after to become a development aid volunteer in Nicaragua. After all the misery of the lower leagues, FCSP was back and with a vengeance: the lack of funds was compensated by a team effort both on the pitch and on the terraces (and by downing a lot of beer in the “Clubheim”, the club’s pub) with attendance numbers exploding and supporters backing the team from the first to the last minute, no matter what the score. The new private TV stations were eager to promote this “crazy” club and helped in creating an image that has positive and negative effects to this day.

Our first event in that series took place on May 29 where we organised an autograph session with some of the players of that team and afterwards a talk where we showed historic pictures and videos and had the players explaining them and telling various stories about the incidents at that time. The two hours that we had scheduled for the talk flew by like five minutes, with stories that seemed to be so remote from what we are used from “modern football” these days.

Just the following weekend, the football tournament of the registered supporters clubs, the summer party of the fans and the opening of the Fanräume (including the move of the Fanladen from its old location in the Brigittenstraße to the Fanräume) took place. 1910eV was represented with an information booth where people could get photos taken of themselves in gear from 1988. The best picture got one of our shiny new 1910 t-shirts. It was good fun and we welcomed a couple of new members as well.

Fun is important, but what would St. Pauli be without (socio-)politics and controversial topics? We will have a weekend of events and exhibitions planned for September which will offer more depth in that direction and cover connections between the past, the present, and the challenges of the future. I can’t offer any more details just now as we are in talks with various parties and intend to have a consistent communication, so watch this space.

One of the less visible, but very important projects just got off the ground too: the FCSP archive. It is hard to believe that there is hardly anything professional in existence, just the remains of the centenary exhibition. The workgroup for that task is now checking out possible rooms, defining standards and procedures and started to pick up items offered to the museum, e.g. in the course of the Fanladen move.

Another project is making it possible to become a part of the exhibition: a couple from Duisburg is building a miniature Millerntor for us, fully detailed in the scale 1:100. They do that as a hobby and without any profit, but to re-finance the costs of the material and to fill the ground and make it look more lively, everybody will get the chance to have a miniature figure modeled and painted after themselves by sending in pictures and individual whishes such as holding a beer in the hand or a scarf above the head. You can see some pictures on our website (sorry, still not translated but we hope to change that soon) and much more on the website of Mr. and Mrs. Tribian who build the model.

That’s it for now. Thanks to Scott, we have a translated version of the membership application form. We would be happy to welcome anyone who is willing to become part of the project and support this big mission in any way, be it as a member or by any other means.