Over the past century, the impact of football on Germany has been manifold, influencing the arts, political debates, and even contributing to the construction of cultural memories and national narratives. Football Nation analyses the game’s fluid role in shaping and reflecting German society, and spans its focus on modern German history, from the Wilhelmine era to the early 21st century. Expounding on topics of gender, class, fandom, spectatorship, antisemitism, nationalism, and internationalism, a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars offer a novel approach to understanding the many influences of football throughout its extensive history which until recently has only been available to a German-speaking readership.
Author(s): Rebeccah Dawson, Bastian Heinsohn, Oliver Knabe, Alan McDougall
Series: Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association, 25
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 316
City: New York
Contents
Introduction — Historical Perspectives on the German Football Nation
Part I — A Border-Crossing Game: German Football and International Cultural Exchange
Chapter 1 — The Introduction and Integration of Football into a Divided Society: Conservative and Socialist Football in Germany from 1871 to 1933
Chapter 2 — Fußball Internationale: Toward a Global History of GDR Football
Chapter 3 — Local Fans, Global Players: Contradictions in Postindustrial Football
Part II — Race, Exclusion, and Otherness in German Football
Chapter 4 — Willy Meisl’s German Football Nation: Internationalism, Austrian Patriotism, and Jewish Pride in Interwar Sports Writing
Chapter 5 — Commodified, Corrupted, and Capitalist: Combatting the Modern Athletic Machine in Melchior Vischer’s Fußballspieler and Indianer
Chapter 6 — Controlling Definitions: Racism and German Identity after Mesut Özil’s National Team Resignation
Part III — Forming Identities through Football: Class and Gender in German Culture
Chapter 7 — The Making of a Football Myth: Memory, Masculinity, and the Media
Chapter 8 — A Gendered Network of Double Binds in Joachim Hasler’s Football Musical Don’t Cheat, Darling!
Chapter 9 — From GDR-Emigrant to Third-Class Citizen: Football Stadiums, Social Divides, and East German Identities in Andreas Gläser’s BFC is to Blame for the Wall
Part IV — The Politics Beyond the Pitch: German Fandom and Spectatorship
Chapter 10 — Educating the Spectator: Athlete-Fan Interplay in the Early German Football Film The Eleven Devils by Zoltan Korda
Chapter 11 — Antisemitic Metaphors in German Football Fan Culture Directed at RB Leipzig
Chapter 12 — One Foot on the Ball and the Other Nearly in Jail? Analyzing the Role of Social Work in the Interaction of Supporters, Police, and the Media in Hamburg Football
Chapter 13 — Countering Contingency: Aesthetics and Fan Codetermination in German Football
Conclusion — “Fußball ist alles!” Football’s Importance in German Society
Index
