Feeling Political Through a Football Club: FC Schalke 04, 1904–2020

Abstract

This chapter examines mourning practices on the basis of the German football club FC Schalke 04. This club, it argues, derives its current image and emotional templates from the mourning practices marking the end of coal mining in the region. Throughout the twentieth century, Schalke repeatedly became involved in participatory politics, despite its allegedly apolitical nature as a leisure club. Governments, political parties, and local magistrates sought to use Schalke fans’ emotional relationship with the club for their own ends. Because of its capacity to unite people in times of crisis, the club itself developed into a significant political player in its home city of Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, during the crises of deindustrialization in the mid-1990s.