Fort Wayne is a city of around 260,00 in the very east of the northern half of Indiana. Like many mid-sized midwestern cities, it has been shaped by the industrialization of the late 19th century, immigration waves from Western, Central and Southeastern Europe until the 1920s and from the rest of the world today, deindustrialization after World War 2, the decline of urban America as well as revitalization more recently.

It also has a soccer club, founded by German immigrants for the “Promotion of Soccer Football and German Culture” in 1927. And unlike many other semi-professional or pre-professional teams, Fort Wayne SC is a proper members-owned club, with members well beyond German immigrants now, and legally a Non-Profit. It’s not just that this story is interesting - it’s also pretty well documented. FWSC has some history minded folks out there. I talked to one of them, Dan Kruse, who also happens to be the club’s president. The club appeared on my radar because they play my hometown team Goshen City FC, new to the Midwest Premier League, on the 31st. So before a longer conversation with Dan Kruse, I also got a quick word from Goshen City FC’s boss, Henrique Eichelberger, about new life in a new league, and the outlook for this season.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Fort Wayne SC 1927

Goshen City FC

Midwest Premier League

Underrated Eurovisions Songs:

Abor and Tynna (Germany) - Baller

Erika Vikman (Finland) - Ich Komme (live video from the arena, because… flying giant mic and things)

Laura Thorn (Luxembourg) - La Poupée Monte Le Son

Lucio Corsi (Italy) - Volevo Essere un Duro

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

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Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Gabriel Kuhn is an Austrian writer and researcher who works for the Central Organization of Swedish Workers - and sat for an in-person interview (he has been on before when we talked about his wonderful book Soccer vs the State in 2023.) In this episode, we time travel to "red Vienna" in the 1920s, to talk about how antifascism, organized workers' sports, the professionalization of soccer and sobriety intersected then, and what promise they can hold for the present. Our baseline is the life of Viennese Social Democratic leader Julius Deutsch, an edited collection of whose writings Gabriel has published with a comprehensive introduction by himself.

British historian Richard Crockett recently wrote the seminal Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created The Modern World. He argues that the Vienna before everyone fled, first from the Austrian fascists and then from the Nazis, the “Red” Vienna, governed by the Social Democrats, was a kind of a laboratory for the modern world. From psychoanalysis to Reaganomics, from Hollywood Westerns to fitted kitchens - this city, Crockett says, made the modern world. That is also the time period, in which a separate workers football association and a workers football league saw the light of day in Austria, an alternative to the rapidly professionalizing other Austrian league, and Austrian football association.

Working class organizers and politicians saw not just the recreational value of soccer, and watching soccer. They also saw its social, organizational, ethical and prophetic value. First, another football became possible - to make clear that another world was possible, too.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Gabriel’s website, with more on the Julius Deutsch book and other books here

PM Press, book website for the book

Gabriel Kuhn interview on Julius Deutsch in Jacobin Magazine

TAPoF Episode 44, on Hakoah Vienna, Austria’s first professional champion in 1925

Richard Crockett, Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

Matthias Marschik, “Wir Spielen nicht zum Vergnügen:” Arbeiterfussball

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

This is the second part of a two-part episode - the first part is here, episode 54, from March 31.

We will start at FC St. Pauli, now in the German Bundesliga, at the club’s museum which has very active researchers, and we’ll end at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and the bigger question of what right remembering looks like in professional soccer - and what it can look like. We will take that journey with no less than 3 guests: Celina Albertz, a researcher and also in the curating team of the FC St. Pauli Museum; Sönke Goldbeck, Board chair and director of the museum, and Felipe Tobar, Assistant Professor in the Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management Department at Clemson Universit in South Carolina and founder of the Football Studies youtube channel. He is also the mastermind of a new documentary on public memory and football, which we will also talk about.

Part 1 is mostly concernedwith the research on the famous St. Pauli matchday song "Das Herz von St. Pauli" ("The Heart of St. Pauli"), and the discussion started by Celina's research into the composer, lyricist and performer of that song. Part 2 funnels out from there to larger questions of soccer, research and remembering, and features Felipe more heavily.

If you want to know more about FC St. Pauli and what makes the club special, especially to this podcast, listen in to episode 26, from 2023, when I talked with two social workers that are employed by the club. Felipe Tobar has also been here before, he has talked about his work and research in episode 31, last february.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Das Herz von St. Pauli sung in the Millerntor Stadium (YouTube video)

Deutsche Welle report on the song and its roots, with Celina's research

FC St. Pauli Museum

Felipe Tobar's documentary, "The Match That not Every Club Wants to Play" (YouTube, Football Studies channel)

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/