From the mid 1980s on, when occupants of the squatted houses in the Hafenstrasse discovered the Millerntor as a place to go, things began to change. Not only did the squatters and their friends introduce the skull and crossbones flag into the stadium, they also brought a totally different sort of fan culture: political, creative and against the far-right.
At the same time, more and more people got attracted by FC St. Pauli: because at Millerntor, they could watch football – very often in a crowd of less than 3,000 – without having to be afraid of right-wing attacks. However, the Millerntor was not a “Nazi free zone” yet. On the terraces, the fan club “United” was causing and looking for trouble.
“They were Nazis”, Holger Scharf recollects. “When you were in a pub and some of these guys stood beside you, you instantly looked for your friends”.
The fan club “Tornado” from Hamburg-Hamm organised away tours, but always carried an imperial war flag with it – until other fans simply took it down.
“The hard core guys who just didn’t stop thinking like this got banned by us”, Sven Brux remembers: “Things were like ‘shut up or get a thrashing’. Others, we could persuade in a lot of discussions that the stuff they were parroting was simply bollocks.”
Holger Scharf is co-founder of the “AG Interessierte Mitglieder” (Working group of Interested Members (AGiM)), the first opposition group within FC St. Pauli organised by left-winged fans, and the first AGiM-member to be elected to the club’s supervisory board.
Sven Brux is co-founder of the Fanladen St. Pauli and today the Head of Events & Security at FC St. Pauli.