A new book on football in a major European city which has never staged a League top-flight Derby match is reviewed by Eric Brown…
BY ERIC BROWN
Anyone who has visited Berlin cannot fail to be impressed by its high-class, glass-walled stores which contrast sharply with the architecture of the Nazi era.
Fine examples of the latter can be found in the Olympic complex, where American Jesse Owens shattered the watching Adolf Hitler’s dream of German sprinting supremacy in the 1936 Games.
I was fortunate enough to play cricket here, on a pitch overlooked by huge buildings with the gold Nazi eagle symbol still peering down on proceedings. Behind the bowlers’ arm, the distracting presence of energetic footballers turned out to be the Hertha Berlin squad practising for a new season.
A new book traces Hertha’s switchback existence in German football alongside that of Dynamo Berlin, in a major European city never to have staged a top-flight domestic League derby.
The only meetings between the city’s major clubs have been fairly meaningless summer friendlies or when Dynamo played the Hertha second XI in the German fourth division, known as Regionalliga.
For years, the clubs were separated by the Berlin Wall. Dynamo was the club of the Ministry for the Interior, the feared Stasi, with Erich Mielke, founder and director of the political police, as its honorary president. Unsurprisingly, they won 10 DDR Oberliga titles in a row.
Ensuring a team from the western sector always occupied a place in the Bundesliga was considered politically imperative, as west Berlin was left completely segregated from the rest of West Germany.
This spot was left vacant during later stages of the Cold War but previously was almost always filled by Hertha. Even after reunification, the clubs were separated, with Dynamo, no longer able to rely on Ministry support, having to compete under the name Berlin FC and assigned to the third division of the new German League in its first season, 1991-92.
Dynamo, or Berlin FC, faded from German football after being relegated to the Regionalliga in 2000 to be replaced by Union Berlin, who became the first East Berlin team to participate in the Bundesliga.
Author Damiano Benzoni describes Berlin football as one of instability and spectacular failures in a city of never-ending flux, ever exposed to the storms of history. He bravely loosens a tangled web to expose the growing pains of Berlin football.
The Derbyless City by Damiano Benzoni is published by Pitch, priced £14.99
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