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.<\/p>\n
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At the same time, more and more people got attracted by FC St. Pauli: because at Millerntor, they could watch football\u00a0 \u2013 very often in a crowd of less than 3,000 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
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“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”.<\/p>\n
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The fan club “Tornado” from Hamburg-Hamm organised away tours, but always carried an imperial war flag with it \u2013 until other fans simply took it down.<\/p>\n
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“The hard core guys who just didn\u2019t 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.”<\/p>\n