When – in the second half of the 1960s – students in Germany began to protest against the “musty smell of 1000 years” in politics, society and science, business within FC St. Pauli remained unaffected by these winds of change.
The members and away support of the “Kiezclub” rather preferred to exercise and watch sport in peace and conviviality. Togetherness and consensus were paramount – too much politics would have been disturbing.
Back then, the club cultivated a more bourgeois image. Its board, as the official 75th anniversary commemorative journal reads, would rather remind of “honourable Hanseatic merchants from the stock exchange area” than of “people from the shady and notorious ‘sinful mile'”.
Also, the bar “St. Pauli Theke” inside the “Clubheim” (clubhouse) was not really praised for being a centre of political consciousness: “At Millerntor, things remained cosier, more traditional”, the journal continues. The bonds were described as more “original and more Lower German style”. “High society” people like one would see at HSV are not met here.
In those days, however, HSV did not have so many problems with such high society people, but more with right-wing radical fans. A fact that played a massive part in the transformation of FC St. Pauli. This change, in fact, has its roots in this period – yet, it was still a long way for FC St. Pauli to become the politically aware club which it is today.