DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach presented the 2014 Julius Hirsch prize to the Ultras fan group Schickeria yesterday in Gelsenkirchen. The fan group remembers the work of Kurt Landauer, who was able to flee to Switzerland after being detained in Dachau and after the end of the war, he took over as the President of FC Bayern Munich.
“Jewish international players, officials and journalists all promoted the development of football between 1910 and 1933. We can still feel the positive influence of these lost heroes today. Schickeria appreciates the life-time achievement of Kurt Landauer and have made football fans aware of that in the FC Bayern stadium, through moving choreographies, and therefore, the Ultras fan group from Munich are being deservedly honoured today,” said Wolfgang Niersbach in front of 300 guests of honour at the ceremony held in Gelsenkirchen’s Hans-Sachs-Haus yesterday: “No one is excluded from football due to their religion or skin colour. It has to be in the constitution but also it has to be seen in everyday life. We are fully committed as an organisation to this award and will be awarding it again in the future too.”
The Chief Executive of FC Bayern Munich, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who was a guest of honour at the awards ceremony alongside League President Dr.Reinhard Rauball, former chairman of the Central Council Charlotte Knobloch and Andreas Hirsch, who is the grandson of the former national player who DFB have named the award after since 2005, said: “I came to FC Bayern in 1974 and played there for 10 years. During that time, I didn’t hear the name Kurt Landauer once. That has, thank goodness, now changed. The importance of Kurt Landauer today at FC Bayern Munich is the biggest achievement of Schickeria.” Last year, Kurt Landauer was appointed as Honorary President of the German record holders.
The second award went to a community project in Dortmund, which involved, among others, Borussia Dortmund, the fan and funding department, and the fan project, as well as the memorial from Steinwache. In June, 32 BVB supporters visited the Polish memorials at Zamosc, Lublin, Belzec, Majdanek and Sobibór and set out to search for traces of 800 Jews from Dortmund that were deported in 1942. The community college in Roth was presented with the third award for their extensive event programme “Roth is colourful” around the exhibition “Kicker, soldier and legends” about the history of Jewish football in Germany.
The honorary award, that has been presented in the past to Thomas Hitzlsperger and the Editor-in-Chief of Die Zeit Giovanni di Lorenzo among others, went to Mario Bendel in 2014. The 46-year-old from Berlin writes and edits the Facebook page “Football fans against the right.” “Never again” is the phrase that DFB uses with the foundation of the Julius Hirsch award. He makes a contribution to the strengthening of the civil society, democracy and human rights, as well as the protection of minorities’ inalienable values.
