The Wall in the Head
Children playing at the Berlin Wall in Berlin-Wedding, Thomas Hoepker, Berlin. Germany. 1963
Modern concrete-slab buildings and a picture of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party Erich Honecker.
Thomas Hoepker, Halle-Neustadt, Saxony-Anhalt, East Germany, 1975
After the Second World War, Germany was divided between the Russian Soviet East and the West, which was allied with the US and UK. Berlin was situated deep in the Eastern section, however as it was the capital it too was divided down the middle by a wall. Since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Germany was reunified, no Eastern German team has won a Bundesliga title. There have only been 6 East German teams in the top division also, and the two most recent - Red Bull Leipzig and Union Berlin - had to undergo significant change and tribulation to achieve such a position. In recent times, the only player to be born in East Germany and play for the national team is Toni Kroos, despite the former Soviet territory forming 15% of Germany’s entire population. A wide range of issues dictate the disparity which continues to this day.
In their time West Germany were one of the most dominant sides in the world. They won 3 World Cups (1954, ‘74, ‘90) and 2 European Championships (1972, ‘80). Their players, like Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller (scored 58 in 52 games for West Germany) were some of the best at the time. However, East Germany had no footballing success at either continental or international level. Author Alan McDougall imagines the former East German territory as the ‘unloved cousin of its affluent West German counterpart’. This is particularly evident when comparing the East’s weak economy to the success of the West. The residual hostility between the two sides of Germany has been identified and named the ‘Mauer im Kopf’, meaning the ‘wall in the head’. The phrase was coined in 1982 by West German Peter Schneider and argues that despite the falling of the Berlin Wall, there still persists a division between the former East territories and the West. In football, the divided Germany is clearly still seen.
One of the reasons for East Germany’s relatively poor footballing output was their prioritisation of the Olympics. According to sport historian Sheldon Anderson, in 1969 the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic decided to concentrate on individual Olympic disciplines as a more cost-effective way of showcasing its socialist system. As a result, between 1976 and 1988 East Germany won the 2nd most medals in the three summer Olympics. Included in their Olympic success was a gold, silver and bronze in football. When a Western reporter asked why there were no tall players in East German national football, a coach replied that the taller athletes were rowing instead. Despite Olympic success, there was some popular backlash: East Germans supported their ideological competitors, the West, when they played and won the 1954 World Cup final against Hungary, a fact that the secret police, the Stasi, duly noted. By not supporting the popular sport of football, the East German government harmed its own popularity as the people still yearned for the sport. One redeeming event however was in 1974 when West Germany held the World Cup and played the East. The socialist team won 1-0 and would go on to top the group.
Despite the occasional scalp, West Germany dominated. Between 1973 and 1991, club teams from the two sides played 17 times, with 12 wins for the West. When playing in the most prestigious European cup, the West had a 100% win rate. This led to a feeling of inferiority among the conquered East German clubs.
Another explanation of the East’s lack of success is summed up by the East German Minister of Sport, Manfred Ewald. He said that “Sport is not [for] private amusement, it is social and patriotic education”. Football was seen by Ewald as something with a societal purpose and a tool that could be used to instill values. Whilst that may be at odds with today’s football, the East nevertheless practiced this idea. Ballon d’Or winning Matthis Sammer was the stand-out player of eastern team Dynamo Dresden. His team’s success led to the state rewarding them with new football boots. Sammer was the only one who was bought ill-fitting boots (3 sizes too big). On the topic he said, “It is not a secret that it was a form of harassment as individualism was not tolerated.” The wings of exceptional Eastern footballers were clipped by the state in an attempt to support their socialist collectivism. Furthermore, young children were only allowed to play football for ‘educational’ purposes. So the formative period of a young footballer’s life was limited, and supposing they overcame this barrier, their future career could again be undermined by the state.
The East’s obstruction of football was one of the many factors that resulted in antipathy towards the state and the illegal travelling across the Berlin Wall. In 1979, the East’s infamous BFC Dynamo travelled to the West to play Kaiserslautern. Whilst travelling, the coach stopped to refuel. One of the East’s best players, Lutz Eigendorf jumped off the bus and into a taxi heading for the Western border. He left behind his team, his wife and his child (who would now be under permanent surveillance). Four years after his defection, Eigendorf was driving from a party when a truck crashed into him. He died days later, where blood samples suggested a high alcohol level. According to those at the party, the percentage of his blood alcohol level was incongruous with how much he had drunk, fuelling suspicion that the Stasi organised the death of the player as retribution. Image and football were of clear importance to the state.
East German footballers were taught a different game. Individualism was curbed, and instead the idea of community was promoted. Additionally, other sports were supported and so football was underfunded and under developed. The effects of this are still felt today. There are only two Eastern teams in the top German division at this moment, RB Leipzig and Union Berlin. RB Leipzig were only established in 2009 and are owned by Red Bull, a famous and rich Austrian drinks company. They have invested significant funds into the team and led the club to 3rd in the country in 2018/19. The fact an Eastern team has to be funded from abroad to achieve success only further exaggerates the disparity between the East and the West. To this day, the unemployment rate in the East is 2.1% lower than the West, and almost every other signifier of economics places the East second to the West, despite the wall falling more than 30 years ago.
Union Berlin, a genuinely Eastern team and the most recent to join the Bundesliga, had extreme financial difficulties. To remain in the smaller regional divisions, the fans of Union Berlin went on a campaign called ‘Blüten für Union’, translated as Bleeding for the Union. This involved fans donating blood, receiving a recompense for their effort, and donating it to the club. They are particularly proud of the fact they didn’t have to rely on foreign money. However, it seems ridiculous that to survive, an Eastern team either have to rely on foreign money, or the fans to donate some themselves. The odds are stacked against Eastern teams, as proved by their lack of representation in the Bundesliga.
Eastern football has held disdain partially due to the actions of one club, Berliner FC Dynamo. As a club they won the East German title 10 times on the trot, but this feat was secured by the pressuring of referees and illegal doping. Their patron, Erich Mielke, was the head of the Stasi, who was subsequently prosecuted and incarcerated for political murders.
The isolation of Eastern football has resulted in a less civilised fan culture, historian Hanns Leske states. In 2011 Dynamo Dresden fans, a club formerly associated with the Soviet Union, travelled to Dortmund. There they caused 150,000 Euros worth of damage and as a punishment were slapped with a ban for the next season’s German cup. This felt like a severe punishment, especially when you consider that Western teams like Eintracht Frankfurt, Mainz and Nuremberg engaged in similar behaviour and escaped with lesser punishment. So the wall in the head idea has some basis. This feeling of inferiority and being ganged up on has resulted in some extreme responses. Eastern German provinces like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, home to the birthplace of Toni Kroos, have high levels of representation of the newest iteration of German far-right politics, the AfD. The lack of integration of the East in all formats, sport-wise, economically, culturally etc., has led to this idea of a ‘wall in the head’, and has encouraged a rise in extremism.
East and West German football are completely at odds with one another, unlike anything seen in England. The lack of Eastern teams in the Bundesliga to this day is a result of the division of Germany after World War 2. There has been a failure to reincorporate the former Soviet territories into the wider German footballing infrastructure, and this has had some unfortunate results. It is easy to forget that only in 2018 did the time pass that the Berlin Wall had been down longer than it had been up. But it seems that the wall still exists in football, even 30 years after its physical element was destroyed.
Written by Harry Russell