The following is a transcription of a story I found on
DW.com today:
"Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, several
East German clubs were quite successful in Europe. Thirty years on, no team
from the last season of the former GDR's top flight plays in the Bundesliga.
But why?
November 9th, 1989 – 30 years ago. The Wall fell. People in the east looked forward to the
future, to a new world, new possibilities, and Western products. In football it was similar. In November ’89, East German clubs looked
forward to Western TV money, new sponsors, and duels with Bayern and
Dortmund. As did players like Manchester
City legend Uwe , then a 20-year old East German international.
Uwe Rösler:
We watched our “idols” on television for years, for decades, then we played
against them.
DW: Or GDR talent Steffen Freund, who benefitted from the
change. Not just because he later won the Euros…
Freund: I rented
straightaway a penthouse flat. Can you
imagine a penthouse flat?
DW: The people from East Germany saw great times
coming. But things turned out
differently. Most companies in the GDR
were shut down. Millions of people lost
their jobs. The Eastern economy crashed,
and so did its football. Today, 30 years
after the fall of The Wall, not a single team from the East German top division
in ’89 is part of the Bundesliga. The
last GDR champions, Hansa Rostock, are stuck in the third division. GDR record champions Dynamo Berlin play in
the fourth tier, alongside Lok Leipzig and Erfurt. They all formerly played in Europe. Even worse, Steffan Freund’s former club
Stahl Brandenburg currently play in the seventh division. Thirty years after the fall of The Wall, it’s
pretty clear to see – reunification and football failed. Couldn’t it have gone differently? The situation for the GDR in November ’89
wasn’t so bad. Reigning champions Dynamo
Dresden had reached the UEFA Cup semi-final just a few months before. Dynamo Berlin almost eliminated Arsene
Wenger’s Monaco from the Cup Winner’s Cup.
Karl-Marx-Stadt won game after game in the UEFA Cup, and the national
team were on their way to qualifying for the 1990 World Cup. They beat the Olympic champion Soviet Union
in a stunning performance.
The GDR was a big player in Europe. So how did East
German football become what it is today?
Freund: Reiner
Calmund. He came over with a few guys and bought the best players. That is a good example why, in the end, it
was difficult to survive for the East German clubs.
DW: Leverkusen manager Reiner Calmund sealed the first
East-West deal just one month after the fall of The Wall. He signed Andreas Thom, the best GDR striker
at that time. Dresden star Ulf Kirsten
followed, and Matthias Sammer, later a Ballon d’Or winner, went to Stuttgart
the same year.
Uwe Rösler:
The Bundesliga came over and “head hunted” all the talent out of the east, and
the east clubs really didn’t get paid the money to richly deserved to rebuild
their clubs and their structure.
DW: The dream of
the “golden West” turned out to be a nightmare.
The GDR couldn’t compete in the free market. GDR clubs were all part of GDR-owned
companies, the players paid by the state.
There was no “know-how” in terms of marketing, sponsorship, or
contracts. Regional sponsors in the East
didn’t have much money, and most of the Western companies didn’t want to invest
in East German clubs.
Michael Kölmel
[Entrepreneur]: I think the investors from the West were interested in other
things. Probably mainly in real estate,
or firms that bough up trusts. Back
then, no one was really getting into investing in football.
DW: Michael Kölmel
invested in many East German clubs in the 90s and 2000s. He saved Union Berlin from bankruptcy, and
helped Red Bull Leipzig to rise. But
some of his and fellow investors’ ventures failed. Dynamo Dresden, for example, were ruined by a
West German businessman who later went to prison for embezzlement.
Kölmel:
Many clubs simply made wrong decisions with the money. They didn’t know exactly what they were
doing, and they signed players or coaches from the West for way too much money.
Rösler: Of course, there was bad management, of
course lack of investment, of course lack of infrastructure. But how a club in the East should know how to
run immediately a football club when they were never exposed to do that before…
DW: So the lack of
commercial skills in the East was a big factor on why reunification and
football failed. Another reason for the
downfall of football in the East is that the fusion of the East and West German
leagues simply was not fair. In 1991
there were still the West German Bundesliga with 18 teams and the East Germ
Oberliga with 14 sides. Instead of
merging these leagues, all 18 Bundesliga teams were allowed to stay in the top
division, and only two East German teams could join. A further six GDR teams were relegated to the
second division, and the rest went directly from the first East German league
to the third all-German league. For
example, former European Cup winners Magdeburg or record champion Dynamo
Berlin…
Kölmel: It was pretty unfair. They should have expanded the
Bundesliga. Then maybe the damage
wouldn’t have been so bad. It put the
East back ten years.
Rösler: The East football family joined the West
German family basically when West Germany just won the World Cup. So you basically you have to take what you
get.
DW: Uwe Rösler had a difficult
start in the first reunified season. He
struggled at Dynamo Dresden. In 1992 he
unsuccessfully went to the West German club Nurmburg.
Rösler: There was another level of football, another
level of scrutiny, media to cope with, contracts to cope with, also a little
bit a society “with elbows” – you had to look out for yourself. In the East, everything came more from a collective,
we were more “team”, in the West you needed to expand your elbows to survive.
Freund: Now you
have to look after yourself, you have to learn, and then you realize a little
bit more how far the East German side was away from the West German side.
DW: Despite these
differences, Steffen Freund made it in the West. He won titles with Dortmund and Germany, and
ended up as a fan favorite at Tottenham.
The same for Uwe Rösler
at Manchester City. Between ’94 and ’98,
he scored fifty goals for the Sky Blues, becoming part of their Hall of
Fame. But meanwhile, their former clubs
collapsed. Stahl Brandenburg went
bankrupt in 1998, Dynamo Dresden left the Bundesliga in 1995 with millions in
debt and never came back. So after 30
years, GDR football is dead. But wait –
is it?
East German clubs may seem doomed, but in some ways the
East is very much alive. Take the
current German youth development system.
It is undoubtedly one of the best in the world. With specialized football schools and an
outstanding scouting system from the age of ten. All implemented in the 2000s by East German Matthias
Sammer.
Rösler: He basically copied a lot of things that
already happened decades, 20-30 years before in the East. And I think all football Germany had
benefitted from that, and the “golden years” came after that with a lot of
young talent.
DW: If you take a
look at the three decades after reunification, who are the best German
players? In the 90s, Matthias Sammer,
who was born in Dresden, GDR. 2000s –
Michael Ballach, born in Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, GDR. 2010s – Toni Kroos, also born in Dresden,
East Germany.
Freund: A lot of
East German players played later for the German national team. There is a character and a power that I think
it comes overall from the situation in East Germany. East Germany was a poor country. You have to fight, you have to work hard, you
have to grow as a person.
DW: East Germany is no longer poor. Things are getting better. And since 2005, we even have an East German
chancellor.
Freund: East
Germany was ugly, not the nicest area to live.
Now, it’s fantastic to live there…
DW: With Red Bull
Leipzig, there is finally a team from the East that can really compete with the
big teams from the West.
Rösler: I think for the Leipzig people, that somebody
comes in and gives Leipzig a chance to participate in the Bundesliga and participate
in the Champions League, and they have the option to fight for titles, and it’s
something fantastic.
DW: So the
reunification failed, but the East is still alive…"
Tony’s take – Regardless of the lack of “fairness” shown
to the DDR Oberliga teams, the East German teams would not have been able to
compete in the Bundesliga because they didn’t know how. All the players were payed by the East
German state, especially those with the name “Dynamo” attached to them. For instance, Berliner FC Dynamo was the pet
rock of Erich Mielke. He was the DDR
Minister of State Security – the Stasi.
There was a reason Berliner FC Dynamo won the most championships of the
DDR Oberliga – they always got the pick of the litter, so to speak. They got the best of everything – the best
training facilities, equipment, and coaches as well as the best players. A team like that would never stand a chance
against teams where the players, not the state, get to decide where they play. Any team with the Dynamo marker were part of
the Sports Association for the Stasi.
The two teams that were allowed to join the Bundesliga - F.C. Hansa
Rostock and Dynamo Dresden – couldn’t cut it.
Dynamo Dresden currently toils in the second division. F.C. Hansa Rostock now plays in 3. Liga [the
third division]. Instead of toiling away
in a league where there was a “first among equals” and the rest of the teams
suffered equally [Socialism is all about pain-sharing], East German teams would
have had to compete on merit. East
Germany was a meritocracy only for the well-connected or the most gifted of
athletes.
