berlin | Berlin is bedecked in soccer balls. Atop telephone booths, decorating the TV tower, overshadowing the famous Brandenburg Gate, the familiar ball has just about taken over as Germany hosts this year’s World Cup of soccer.
For the first time in decades, Germany is hosting an international sports event. But the monthlong event, which begins Friday, June 9, is much more than fun and games.
“Sport is always political,” says Daniel Wildmann, deputy director of the Leo Baeck Institute in London. “This doesn’t mean it is bad or good. It is part of society and we have to take it into consideration.”
Germany sees the games, which conclude July 9, as a chance to prove to 3 million visitors that it can host a major event without incident.
But in order to do so it must tame the racism that is a part of soccer culture and plagues German society, even though it is rejected by the mainstream.
In the run-up to the games, the German news media has been full of talk about anti-Semitism and xenophobia among some soccer fans, dire warnings to visitors to avoid “foreigner-free” zones in former East Germany and arguments over whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be allowed to attend the games and be arrested on charges of Holocaust denial — a crime in Germany — if he shows up.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Ahmadinejad has said that he plans to attend the tournament if the Iranian team advances to the second round.
Neo-Nazis plan to show their solidarity with Ahmadinejad by welcoming the Iranian team when it plays in Leipzig.
All of the above — not to mention the fears of terrorism — certainly are chilling.
The way Germany handles such matters is “a kind of mirror of how society functions,” said Raphael Gross, director of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt.
But even as the world of soccer becomes more global, with players from Africa competing for top European soccer teams, eradicating racism has proven difficult.
Most racism is directed against Africans, but in Holland, Dutch fans — especially opponents of Amsterdam’s Ajax club, which is identified in the public mind with Jews — often shout things like, “Hamas, Hamas, hang the Jews in the gas.”
Earlier this year in Italy, one player, Paolo Di Canio, earned notoriety and suspensions for giving the Hitler salute to his team’s fans.
Germany is no different. About a week before the tournament, a newsmagazine show on the RTL television network focused on hooliganism in Germany’s lower-level soccer leagues.
With a hidden camera, the program’s editor, Burkhard Kress, filmed fans in the former East German city of Magdeburg singing the “Auschwitz song” — “We are building a U-bahn train, we are building a U-bahn, from Magdeburg to Auschwitz.”
Soccer fans in other German cities also sing the tune, substituting their city for Magdeburg.
In a statement on its Web site, the Magdeburg team’s fan club complained that Kress had taken the film without permission, and said it was not representative of the team.
Two exhibits on the history of Jews in German soccer — one currently on display in the Jewish museums of Frankfurt and Furth, the other one to go up after the World Cup at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin — highlight intriguing Jewish aspects of Germany’s soccer history.
German soccer history was often marked by tolerance and openness, said Daniela Eisenstein, director of the Jewish Museum of Furth, which co-curated the exhibit “Kick it Like Kissinger — A Soccer Alphabet,” on display through September.
While German gymnastics clubs were historically closed to Jews, soccer — championed here by Walther Bensemann, son of a Berlin Jewish banker — was an open sport until the Nazi period, Eisenstein said.
Bensemann, who organized the first international soccer game between Germany and France between the wars, “believed in the power of soccer to bring people together,” Eisenstein said. “And I think he would be an optimist today.”
The upcoming soccer exhibit at the Centrum Judaicum — “Kickers, Fighters and Legends — Jews in German Football” — similarly deals with the Jewish roots of German soccer and the fate of Jewish athletes during the Nazi period.
Eisenstein said she believes attitudes are changing among German soccer clubs and fans, “and the positive ideals of soccer definitely outweigh these other aspects.”
But just in case, teams during the quarterfinals will be carrying banners against discrimination and team captains will read statements against racism and xenophobia before kickoff, Schauble said.
What will happen after everyone goes home? Racism and xenophobia at the tournament is not the end of the issue, Endemann said.