Foto by Stefanie Fiebrig at textilvergehen You just call on me, brother, when you need a handWe all need somebody to lean on As his teammates wheeled away having secured the unlikeliest of victories, a goal that the Unioner will talk about for a generation, Andreas Luthe didn’t join in. He had been at fault …
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Union Berlin’s past, and Union Berlin’s future
As I cycle along Wilheminenhofstrasse, the Indian summer’s sun on my back, the wind coming off the Spree across to the north, the first thing that hits me is the little things, the minutest of details that have changed on the iconic, industrial revolution era yellow brickwork of the Transformatorenwerk. There’s new tags painted up …
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Jimmy Hoge’s Best Story
There was a strangely sad, though beautiful and quite remarkable moment at the 1.FC Union members meeting back in 2009, when Jimmy Hoge received his golden needle. The highest honour the club can present. He was not a man often at a loss for words, but this time there was a choking in his throat …
The Pimenow’s and the Landvoigt’s Brothers
Given what they were about to do, four men that looked less like identical mountainsides than they really should, sat in two identical boats, ill suited to anything other than flying across still water at great speed. Neither pair looked at the other. They didn’t have to. The Pimenows were as aware of the Landvoigts …
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Jürgen May’s Trainers
He wished he could be in control of his own destiny. But Jürgen May, one of the fastest men in the world, was utterly powerless. His life in the hands of a guy he barely knew. Wedged L shaped into the hollowed out cavity of a ludicrous American car. Preying that the border guards wouldn’t …
Helmut Recknagel’s Nerves
Helmut Recknagel never said what it was that made him go back home to Thuringia from a cold, bright day in Bavaria in January, 1956. He’d been jumping off mountains for half his life. He’d grown up in the looming shadow of Germany’s first ever ski-jumping slope. And this was his first big chance to …
Sigmund Jähn’s Back
Though he’d never be so self-important as to complain about it too much, they say that Sigmund Jähn’s back still hurts. It has done since September 3, 1978. No wonder. As his Soyuz capsule plummeted towards Kazakhstan a gust of wind hit it, disturbing the otherwise orderly planned deployment of the last, and the largest, …
Jacob Sweetman 