Jutta Braun (Ed.): Football History. Selected Contributions to Sport in Society [Abstract]

During the last three decades, different occasions have given reason and motivation for new research and interpretation of German football history: First, the caesura of 1989/1990 lifted the curtain regarding East German football history. Ten years later, the decision to host the World Cup in 2006 in Germany was immediately followed by an upswing of academic as well as societal interest in Football History. This HSR Forum comprises some of the consequent intellectual debates, especially centering on the political and cultural impact of the World Cups in 1954 and 1974, as well as the history of the Bundesliga. At the same time, the perspective of Football history on the European level was taken into account. The effects of the booming commercialization of European football are examined as well as its cultural substance, notably by creating European collective “sites of memory.” Moreover, football history is also increasingly analyzed as a momentum of public discourse: be it as the background for propaganda and myths of victims and villains during the Second World War or, even today, a continued source of national stereotypes.