The people's game : football, state and society in East Germany / Alan McDougall.

"Sport in East Germany is commonly associated with the systematic doping that helped to make the country an Olympic superpower. Football played little part in this controversial story. Yet, as a hugely popular activity that was deeply entwined in the social fabric, it exerted an influence that few institutions or pursuits could match. The People's Game examines the history of football from the interrelated perspectives of star players, fans, and ordinary citizens who played for fun. Using archival sources and interviews, it reveals football's fluid role in preserving and challenging communist hegemony. By repeatedly emphasising that GDR football was part of an international story, for example, through analysis of the 1974 World Cup finals, Alan McDougall shows how sport transcended the Iron Curtain. Through a study of the mass protests against the Stasi team, BFC, during the 1980s, he reveals football's role in foreshadowing the downfall of communism"-- Provided by publisher

Cover; Half-title; Title page; Copyright information; Table of contents; List of Illustrations; A football map of the GDR; List of abbreviations; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction; Past and present in East German football; Revising a history of failure?; GDR football in historiographical context; German football before 1945: a brief history; Football in East Germany before 1945; How football was (dis- )organised in the GDR; Sources, structures, and arguments; 2 Football reconstructed; Football at 'zerohour'; Early football competitions; Football of the new type?; Planitz versus the plan.

Sealing footballs division; Between the lines: reflections on football in the SBZ; Part I Players; Made in East Germany: football as Leistungssport; 3 Footballers lives; Gilded elite? Playing football under communism; Heroes like us: footballers in profile; Footballers and politics; Paid to play: money and GDR football; Life at the top: Hans-Jürgen Kreische and Axel Tyll; 4 The national team; Beautiful losers; Learning to win? GDR football between East and West; Us against us? The 'Sparwassergoal'; Decline in the individualist age? The national team in the 1980s.

Unqualified failure? Conclusions on the Auswahl; 5 Club football at home and away; Thinking local, acting local; Delegating power: transfers and local politics; A case study in Resistenz: Chemie Leipzig; East Germany and a Europe of football; Not for export? GDR clubs in European competition; Bitter cup: encounters with West Germany; Three stripes good, two stripes better?; 6 Football and the Stasi; 'Death to the traitor'; Football's tyranny of intimacy; Footballers and the West in the 1950s; Footballers and Republikflucht after 1961; The Weber and Müller cases.

The uncoupling of football and the Stasi; Part II Fans; Watching football under socialism; 7 Spectatorship in the Ulbricht era; Football and the Stalinist aesthetic; (Re- )location: defending local interests in the 1950s; Unsocialist spectatorship: fans behaving badly; Armchair fans: the rise of mediated spectatorship; 8 Fan culture in the Honecker era; Another side of East German youth; Around the wall: encounters with football in the West; 'Dear comrades': football petitions; 'Three cheers for our champions' 96 Fan mail to Dynamo Dresden; The state and football subculture: fan clubs.

9 The 'wild East': hooliganism in the GDR; Fighting socialism: fan disorder behind the Iron Curtain; The state and 'real existing' hooliganism; The hooligan in profile; Hooliganism and the state of socialism; 10 'Crooked champions': the BFC problem; 'Together it works': a football conspiracy theory; BFC in the lean years; 'The damned right to watch honest sport': 25 petitions on BFC; State responses to the BFC controversy; BFC and (the decline of) the GDR; Part III The peoples game; 'King football': the game as Massensport; 11 Football and everyday life; The view from the pitch.

Print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-351).

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