They are, but they don’t have each other, that’s why they become
I see her at the end of the hallway. Too late to duck away, the toilet is halfway there, the woman from the campsite catches me first. “Here, I’ve got something,” she shouts, even though we’ve long since come face to face. Then she sinks her head into her belt pouch, up to her collarbone, you would think it was Hermione Granger’s tent, and I’m glad that she doesn’t ask me to follow her, as Konrad Lorenz reported about the siskin at the time, whom he had nursed back to health. I said: “What?” She, handing me a piece of paper: “FC Bayern!” Why is that now, because of the sausages? No, that can’t be the case. Everyone likes sausages. “Kos Mo Po Li Tis Mus,” she whispers – and she has me. You can be wrong by being right for the wrong reasons. At FC Bayern, however, the magic word becomes the key.
What would become chronically suspicious in politics becomes relevant in football. Here you can’t, here you have to be regressive. The club from Munich is not a club from Munich, but rather one of lost souls, no home, no identity. At best, a corporate identity that could be described exhaustively as “successful”. I don’t think you can be a fan of FC Bayern. Part of being a fan is the willingness to suffer, to remain loyal, even when it’s not easy, to feel like you’re in your own living room with strangers. A Bayern supporter will never experience this sentiment. And because that shoal is missing, the suffering, the FCB fan culture is so weak, the atmosphere in the stadium is so lukewarm, the stories that are told about him are always the same as history.
This is also reflected in the fan chants. In Dresden you walk horizontally across the stands in the “Ost Ost Ostdeutschland” choreography, in Hamburg it chirps: “I’m spending my last money on Barmbek-Uhlenhorst”, Cologne’s “stonn zo dir”, Hertha “just wants to go home”. “, the fans of the Scottish national team sing “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” at least as obliquely as loudly. What do they sing in Bavaria? “Forever Number one” or “Star of the South”, which was committed by Willy Astor, who was actually born for better things. While other hymns are about feeling, the roots, the hood, Bavarian singing is all about being world-famous, holding all the records and winning all the trophies. This can certainly be translated into notes, but not into feelings. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge had completely dispensed with sheet music when he recited his personal rehearsal of that folklore for nothing to say goodbye to Franz Beckenbauer: “Dear Franz, I thank you. / I thank you, I thank you very much. / Thank you, that’s not difficult for us. / Thank you, thank you very much. / I don’t know what to say.” Obviously.
There is a short article on the piece of paper in my hand. South curve fan groups, led by Club No. 12, are planning to record a new stadium anthem and then make it available to FC Bayern free of charge. You heard the signals. Finally something real, authentic, something to love. Who can blame them? However, every kind of “invented tradition” is paradoxical; it tries to create something that can only exist if it has not been created. You don’t create fan culture, you create it.
I wake up from my thoughts, which I probably said out loud. The woman from the campsite has already moved on. She left the note there, perhaps as a suggestion to write something about it today. I watch her for a long time, even though she can no longer be seen.
