The GDR’s Communist dictatorship had an educational goal: disciplined ‘all-round educated socialist personalities’. So it was all the more irritating for the SED leadership that young football spectators started getting increasingly violent at football matches in the 1970s. Incidents included attacks on passers-by, fights between fan groups and vandalism on trains, at railway stations and in pubs. The derbies in East Berlin and Leipzig were particularly notorious. Fan groups from other GDR football clubs were also known for their brutality. Despite enormous efforts, the GDR security forces were unable to stop the escalation of violence. The rioters and other stadium subcultures were perceived as ‘rowdy and negatively decadent’ youths and ‘processed’ using secret police methods.
Incidents of right-wing extremist violence in the fan milieu increased towards the end of the 1970s. Right-wing skinhead subcultures and hooligans adopted football as their own and sought to shatter the self-image of the ‘anti-fascist’ GDR with violence and right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic slogans. The GDR played down the activities as apolitical ‘hooliganism’. Violence and right-wing radicalism were also on the rise in the West, so the GDR attributed the blame to the influence of the ‘class enemy’ from West Germany. This way, they were able to deny that East Germany had their own problem with right-wing thugs. However, there were indeed contacts between right-wing extremist fans in East and West. Criminal sanctions were occasionally imposed on hooligans and right-wing extremist football supporters. Deportation to the Federal Republic of Germany was also a means of getting rid of undesirable right-wing extremists from the football fan scene.
Football fans rioted on a Berlin S-Bahn train after the GDR Oberliga match between 1. FC Union Berlin and FC Hansa Rostock on 20 June 1973. (3)
Leipzig’s main railway station was a transfer station for many fan groups on GDR Oberliga match days. In May 1984, the transport police confiscated various dangerous cutting and striking weapons there. One of them is this homemade 50cm-long link chain with a sharp razor blade inserted at the end. (4)
Although BFC Dynamo and Dynamo Dresden had the same sponsor, the MfS and the Ministry of the Interior, the fans of both teams were hostile to each other. In the winter of 1978, tensions escalated when Dresden fans pelted the BFC team bus with stones. Here, BFC co-coach Achim Hall (left) and captain Frank Terletzki (centre) are watching as the damage caused by a stone thrown at the bus is repaired.
(5)
Destroyed benches in Friendship Stadium in Frankfurt an der Oder after a GDR Oberliga match between FC Vorwärts Frankfurt an der Oder and BFC Dynamo in March 1981. (6)
The use of pyrotechnics was prohibited in the stadiums of the GDR’s top league. The People’s Police and the MfS rarely photographed offences of this kind, which makes these images rare. Here, BFC Dynamo fans are throwing smoke bombs in Erfurt in 1981 and young fans in a fan section are setting off fireworks in 1979. (8, 9)
Damage to a Deutsche Reichsbahn passenger train. 1. FC Union Berlin fans had seized it after a GDR Oberliga match against Hallescher FC in September 1976. (10)
Destroyed bleachers after a GDR Oberliga match between BFC Dynamo and 1. FC Magdeburg at Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sport Park in August 1979. (11)
The MfS had the violence-prone fan scene firmly in its sights towards the end of the 1980s. Individual fans marked with a circle were processed by the Stasi. East Berlin, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sport Park, mid-1980s. (12)
Police officers took away a Rostock fan after violent riots at a BFC Dynamo-FC Hansa Rostock GDR Oberliga match at Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sport Park, around the mid-1980s. (13)
Damage to an S-Bahn train after a GDR Oberliga match between 1. FC Union Berlin and FC Hansa Rostock in June 1973. (14)
Football fans vandalised a tram in Leipzig in April 1988 in the run-up to a GDR Oberliga match between 1. FC Lok Leipzig and 1. FC Magdeburg. Several side windows were broken. (15)
The Stasi targeted young BFC Dynamo football fans in connection with right-wing extremist incidents. This private photo of the fan group, whose members are displaying the Hitler salute, reached the Stasi via an embedded unofficial collaborator (IM). (17)
The Stasi kept right-wing and violent subcultures like skinheads and hooligans under observation, as here at 1. FC Union Berlin’s An der Alten Försterei Stadium in the mid-1980s. (18)
At the end of the 1980s, the MfS targeted a BFC Dynamo fan club called ‘Die Bösen’ (The Bad Guys) because of its far-right slogans and badges. After secret police-style processing, the MfS seized right-wing banners, weapons and symbols. They found letters and maps pointing to contacts with a West Berlin neo-Nazi group. (24, 25)
In the run-up to the Supercup match between BFC Dynamo and Dynamo Dresden in Cottbus in the summer of 1989, hooligans and BFC Dynamo’s right-wing extremist fan scene launched violent attacks against Dresden fans and the People’s Police. The Cottbus police intervened and arrested violent fans. (26, 27)
Private photograph of FC Zurich hooligans meeting in a private East Berlin flat with ‘Die Analen’, a BFC Dynamo fan club, in the mid-1980s. They are wearing masks and posing aggressively with baseball bats. The MfS presumably obtained these photos of ‘Die Analen’ fraternising with the Swiss hooligans through an informer in the BFC fan club. (28)
A surprise in the Principality of Monaco: When BFC Dynamo kicked off their European Champions Cup match at Louis II Stadium on 17 October 1989, television viewers in the GDR and BFC Dynamo officials alike were astonished. BFC fans in the stands loudly supported the team, even though GDR fans had not been allowed to travel to Western countries for years. These photos from the MfS archive show that the right-wing BFC fan club ‘Die Analen’ had apparently re-formed in the West. Fans who had been deported by the MfS before 1989 were joined by those who had recently fled to the West and re-organised themselves as a new club. In Monaco, they openly displayed their right-wing extremist views. (29)
At the Supercup match between BFC Dynamo and Dynamo Dresden in Cottbus in 1989, the police blocked a crowd of fans led by violent hooligans from the right-wing BFC scene to prevent the violence from escalating. (30)
In the mid-1980s, the MfS targeted individual skinheads at Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sport Park during a BFC Dynamo GDR Oberliga match. (31)
Private photograph of a group of young BFC Dynamo football fans, around the mid-1980s. The MfS targeted the BFC Dynamo fan scene, which had a reputation for violence and right-wing extremist incitement. IMs were smuggled into the groups to gather information. But the fan scene’s behaviour was not uniform. The boundaries between left-wing and right-wing skinheads, hooligans and right-wing extremists were blurred. The clothing, haircuts and Manchester United scarves make the people in this photo impossible to clearly categorise, but their fan culture role models obviously come from the UK. (32)
1: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 136 Bild 16
2: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 383 Bild 17
3: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 1572 Bild 8
4: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig, 20250 Bezirksbehörde der Deutschen Volkspolizei Nr. 1878
5: Bundesarchiv, MfS BdZL Dyn Fo 14 Bild 23
6: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 63 Bild 16
7: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 136 Bild 6
8/9: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 63 Bild 7 und 9
10: Landesarchiv Berlin, DVP BV Berlin, C Rep. 303 Nr. 3080
11: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 63 Bild 17
12: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 136 Bild 2
13: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 905 Bild 11
14: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 1572 Bild 7
15: Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig, 20250 Bezirksbehörde der Deutschen Volkspolizei, Nr. 1814
16: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 63 Bild 15
17: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX Fo 855 Bild 5
18: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 837 Bild 8
19/20/21/22/23: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX 1199 Bilder 46, 48, 53, 56, 65
24/25: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 139 Bild 1, Bundesarchiv, MfS HA IX Fo 136 Bild 14
26/27: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 75 Bild 25 + 57
28: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX Fo 890 Bild 7
29: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX 839 Bild 4
30: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 75 Bild 46
31: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 847 Bild 1
32: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX Fo 855 Bild 20
33: Bundesarchiv, MfS BV Bln Fo 906 Bild 1
34: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX Fo 839 Bild 8
35: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX Fo 889 Bild 16
36: Bundesarchiv, MfS HA XX 890 Bild 6