Cup Final between Schalke 04 and SK Rapid. Shortly after, Miller returned to his hometown to play for Luftwaffen-Sportverein Hamburg – the local air-force team. He was promoted to sergeant and later became gunner. Due to his ‘efforts against Soviet Russians’ he received the Iron Cross (of the second-highest level). He continued playing at Dresdner FC until, after the war ended, he convinced some teammates to all go to St. Pauli. His main argument to them was that they would get provisions from his father’s butchers shop. That is how The Wonderful Eleven, who dominated Hamburg football in the late 1940s and is believed to be the best team in the club’s history, came to be formed. Miller retired after the 1949–50 season, aged 37. After hanging up his boots he remained linked to St. Pauli, representing the club on the League Committee. He died in 1967 at the age of 54. Nagel and Pahl, FC St. Pauli, p. 92.
5
Postwar Successes and the Magnificent Eleven
The conflict’s end was a fact. Little by little everything returned to normal in the midst of the ruins and hardships – including much of the population starving. There was a lack of consumer goods – food and clothing – while epidemics spread among those that were barely surviving housed in ruins and basements. More than twelve million people were forced to flee or were evicted. The Third Reich’s military defeat was a psychological blow to citizens that had seen themselves as invincible. The Allied occupation, militarisation and division of the country were followed by the re-establishment of the German government and institutions. In the first municipal elections held after the war, the SPD won in Hamburg and retook control of the city. Indeed they have been in power for much of the twentieth century.
The city’s economy was quickly rebuilt, as happened in the rest of the country. This was thanks to the so-called ‘economic miracle’ that once again, in the 1950s and 1960s, made Germany a financial hub for the continent. The economic good times also had an impact on St. Pauli. The shipyards went back to operating at peak performance and dockers and sailors, with money in their wallets, sought all kinds of amusement in the neighbourhood. In the early 1950s, the Reeperbahn – known as ‘the most sinful mile’ – flourished, setting itself up as St. Pauli’s cultural and social epicentre where ‘sailors, creatives, strippers, prostitutes, homosexuals and gangsters co-habited freely’. Undoubtedly it was St. Pauli’s golden era. The district was a space of leisure and tolerance where everything normally prohibited took place. Local actor and singer Hans Albers invoked its essence in his tune Auf der Reeperbahn nacht un halb eins’ (‘In the Reeperbahn at Half Past Twelve’) – popularised in 1954 after the film of the same name was released. The song included the words, ‘He who on a joyous night has never gone for a good time in the Reeperbahn is a poor soul because he does not know St. Pauli.’1 This explains why the striptease clubs, the brothels and the pubs became the district’s most lucrative businesses. Together they became a big opportunity for some, such as entrepreneur Willi Bartels – known as the ‘King of St. Pauli’ – who went from working in his mother’s butchers to being the pioneer of modern brothels. One of these was the Eros Centre, which opened in 1967 next to the Palais d’Amour, one of the big brothels at that time. Bartels also worked out that he could do speculative business in real estate. Not for nothing, he acquired on the cheap different bomb-damaged buildings: turning them into hotels, restaurants and fashionable nightspots. The port district was transformed into a tourist attraction park aimed at visitors from Scandinavia and the rest of Germany.
The neighbourhood also became the epicentre of an emerging youth music scene. The new generation of young people was not the ‘ruins’ generation and it wanted to have a good time. It was then, in the 1950s, that the first youth styles surfaced, as a result of their flourishing in Britain and – in particular – the rise of rock’n’roll. In Hamburg two antithetical cultures were formed around music – the true catalyst for youth culture in those years: the ‘rockers’ and the ‘Exis’.2
Relatedly the district’s evolution after the war is crucial in order to understand FC Sankt Pauli’s more recent history. It was in the postwar period that Wilhelm Koch became one of football’s main promoters in the city. Gradually the club started its activities again. Thanks to hundreds of volunteers’ great efforts the stadium was restored in record time. Therefore, on 17 November 1946, St. Pauli reopened its pitch, playing a friendly against Schalke 04 in front of 30,000 spectators. The match ended with a 1–0 home victory.
The team returned to competitive football in the 1946–7 season, playing in the Hamburg districts’ league – a tournament overseen by the British forces occupying the city. Months later, St. Pauli participated in the Oberliga Nord, a newly created competition. Its start to the season could not have been better. The team had a string of good matches that produced these dizzying statistics: 22 wins, two draws and only three defeats. Despite this good performance, St. Pauli lost out on the title on goal difference to its nearest rival: Hamburg SC. Its 1–0 home win was not enough to make up for its previous 0–2 defeat. As a result, one goal separated ‘the boys in brown’ from the title. Despite this disappointment, that team would be remembered by the nickname Die Wunder-Elf (‘The Magnificent Eleven’).
Coming second in the Oberliga Nord enabled the club to qualify for the first national tournament held since the end of the war. On 17 July 1948, amid the political crisis caused by the Soviet blockade of Berlin, St. Pauli went onto the turf of the Berlin Olympic Stadium to play in the cup quarter-finals against SG Union Oberschöneweide – the name then for today’s Union Berlin between 1948 and 1951. Before 80,000 fans Die Wunder-Elf taught the Berliners a lesson with its commanding play. This was demonstrated by the final score of 7–0 to St. Pauli (which included a hat trick by its right midfielder Heinrich Schaffer and two more by centre-forward Fritz Machate, Schaffer’s former teammate at Dresdner SC before the war).
In the semi-final St. Pauli came up against 1. FC Nürnberg in a match full of epic moments – at the Neckar-Stadion in Mannheim on 25 July 1948. Even though at half time the Hamburg team was losing 0–2, in the second half it came back to draw – thanks to goals by Heinz ‘ Tute’ Lehmann and Fritz Machate. In extra time, however, a golden volley by Hans Pöschl dashed the sanktpaulianers’ hopes.
Despite the result, Die Wunder-Elf put St. Pauli at the centre of the German football map. The face of the team was the aforementioned Karl Miller, a footballer born in Hamburg’s Neustadt district and butcher’s son. Despite making his debut with the brown-and-white squad during the war, Miller played with Dresdner SC, a team with which he won two Tschammer-pokals – the original name for the DFB-Pokal (DFB Cup) – in 1941 and 1942. Once the war ended, Miller returned to St. Pauli, as well as to his father’s shop in Wexstrasse. His return to the shop must be factored in to understand the fine football played by that incredible team. In a period of scarcity Miller offered his teammates extra portions of meat to compensate for their deficient diets. This, together with the security provided by the British occupation of the city at the end of the war, encouraged footballers such as Helmut Schön, Alfred ‘Coppi’ Beck, Hans Appel and Willi Thiele to play for St. Pauli. Sausages, therefore, were one of the factors that help understand the success of the late 1940s’ historic team.
After reaching the semi-final, Die Wunder-Elf continued to make history by qualifying for the national championship in each of the following four seasons. Indeed, in the 1948–9 season FC St. Pauli was once again Oberliga Nord runner up. In the first of those years, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was created, officially sanctioning a division that would last until reunification in 1990.
The 1950–1 season coincided with the end of rationing, which had been in effect since 1938. Now the German championship group was split into two. The winners of each group would play each other in the final to win the title. That year St. Pauli ended last in its group and therefore had to play the following season in the Oberliga Nord. The team was greatly disappointed when it came third and missed going back up a division. Just before, Miller had left the club, and, at the age of 37, retired from professional football. That was a turning point in the club’s history. The Die Wunder-Elf’s glory days had come to an end. Despite the club’s decline, the players