Herbert Hainer at Bayern members' get-together in St. Pauli

St. Pauli’s return to the Bundesliga proved a wonderful occasion for FC Bayern to hold its fourth away Stammtisch in Hamburg. After club representatives had already been available to answer questions from members in Cologne, Leipzig and Salzburg, president Herbert Hainer paid a visit to Reds supporters up north before Bayern’s 1-0 win at the Millerntor.

The atmosphere in a local brewery near the Reeperbahn S-Bahn station in the heart of St. Pauli was great, and it had already taken Hainer a while to get there on Saturday morning because he kept getting stopped for selfies. From over 600 registrations, 55 participants had been drawn by lot so that they could discuss their concerns about the club with him, managing director Benny Folkmann, who oversees member services, Markus Meindl, director of fan and fan club support and the Red against Racism initiative.

In recent years, the club has developed numerous dialogue formats for regular meetings and personal exchanges with members, which is “very important to us, because we want to be close to you, even for those who are not from Munich and the surrounding area,” said Hainer. “FC Bayern is a family that extends across Germany and far beyond. You are all FC Bayern - it's great that we are together today.” In addition to regular members' meetings at these so-called Stammtische, the repertoire includes content workshops, quiz evenings, darts tournaments and Schafkopf evenings, explained Folkmann, summarising: “Once again, it was a cordial, but also constructively critical exchange, from which we take good thoughts and ideas back to Säbener Straße. We and our entire team are always very grateful for this.”

The members also brought amazing memories with them. Martina Vatter became an FC Bayern fan in 1965 when she witnessed the 1-0 loss at the Grünwalder Stadion on the club’s Bundesliga debut and thought to herself: ‘I'll stick with them’. After a match in 1974, the players once threw roses into the crowd and she caught the bouquet from Uli Hoeneß. She brought her ticket from back then to the members' get-together and was delighted to show it; she even kept the dried petal of a rose in it. Thomas Sassenberg wore his own ‘Saviour’ shirt from 2003, when the German record champions helped St. Pauli avoid insolvency with a charity match (“It's sacred, I only wear it on special occasions - only FC Bayern does things like that”), and postman Holger Wichern explained that he had taken time off work especially for today's meeting. The two friends Rosanna Schröder and Vanessa Bunk said that they had decided during an evening of watching an FCB game together that they wanted to support the club not just at home on the couch but more actively as members, so they both signed up. It is important to them that FC Bayern also addresses social issues such as diversity and continues to take a clear stance on racism and antisemitism, they said.  

After the official end of the event, which was also attended by two representatives of St. Pauli, FC Bayern organised a further get-together with burgers and beer to watch the match at the Millerntor on a big screen. An intensive dialogue had already taken place the day before between those responsible for anti-racism work at St. Pauli and FCB’s Red against Racism initiative. In addition, young members of FC Bayern were introduced to the club's social commitment in a separate workshop, in which the club's completely revised new child protection concept was explained alongside Red against Racism and the German record champions' OBACHT awareness concept was discussed.