City Focus: Gelsenkirchen, Home of Schalke 04

Benjamin Neumann

Football has a long and moving history in Gelsenkirchen. The city is located in the centre of the Ruhr, an urban area in the western part of Germany with more than 6 million people and a number of towns right next to each other.

Gelsenkirchen developed from a small settlement, first mentioned in documents in 1147, to a mighty city during the industrial revolution in the 19th century. It was formerly dominated by the coal and steel industries. Coal was discovered for the first time in 1840. In the 1950s almost a half million miners extracted annually no less than 124,600 tons of soft coal in the region. But the boom in ‘black gold’ was over with cheaper hard coal coming in from abroad. These imports contributed to the death of the powerful mining industry and thousands of people became unemployed in the Ruhr area - of course in Gelsenkirchen as well. Population of the city declined over the last decades drastically. From its peak in the 1960s with 400,000 inhabitants to only about 280,000 today.

Today the ‘city of a thousand fires’, once called so because of its countless furnaces, turned into the ‘city of a thousand suns’ as Gelsenkirchen has developed into a centre of production and research into solar energy. Nevertheless structural changes are still going on today and are creating a number of jobs in the service-sector. Some other attractions in the city are the ‘Zoom Adventure World’, a newly created zoo with animals from Asia, Africa and Alaska on an area of 33 football pitches, or the ‘Musiktheater im Revier (MiR)’, a well established theatre for plays, opera and musicals.

Gelsenkirchen is best known for football. This sport always played an important role in the history of the city. Currently there are over 70 football clubs with 48,000 members existing in the town while the number of active players is about 10,000. Bundesliga side FC Schalke 04 is the most popular club with a long and glorious history. Many people from abroad may have never heard of Gelsenkirchen but a huge number of them know Schalke 04.

Founded in 1904 Schalke has since then developed into a club with over 66,500 members throughout the world. Schalke have won the German Championship seven times, the DFB-Pokal (German Cup) four times and the UEFA-Cup once.

The club became well known for the ‘Schalker Kreisel’ (translated: Schalker spinning top) during the 1930s and 40s when legendary players like Ernst Kuzorra and Fritz Szepan dominated the game of the Royal Blues and led them to six German championships. Home of the club back then was the “Glückauf-Kampfbahn” (Glückauf being the traditional greeting of the coal miners).

In the early 1970s Schalke moved into the Parkstadion, which was built to host five games in the 1974 World Cup. The club meanwhile went through some ups and downs during the 1980s which led to three relegations into the German second tier (2.Bundesliga) and some financial troubles. Finally Schalke returned to the Bundesliga again in 1991 and there they have remained ever since. Success on the pitch came back once again too, with the biggest club’s biggest ever triumph coming in 1997. In a two legged final the Royal Blues defeated Inter Milan to win the UEFA Cup.

The home of the club today is the impressive “Veltins-Arena”. Opened in 2001 it is one of a select few UEFA 5-star state-of-the-art football stadiums in Europe. It has a retractable roof, a removable playing surface and can house over 61,000 football fans. It is not only a football temple, but also a stage for opera and rock concerts and even biathlon skiing races during the winter. The UEFA Champions-League final in 2004 and five games of the FIFA World Cup 2006 were played in the stadium. A campaign with the motto “The Culture of Football” for hosting the UEFA-Cup final 2010 has recently been kicked off together with RUHR.2010, as the Ruhr area has been awarded the title European Capital of Culture for that year. Just recently UEFA announced that the stadium is on the shortlist for 2010.

Meanwhile Schalke fans are entering into their fiftieth year of waiting for the German title. No doubt a long time has passed since 1958 when the Royal Blues won their last national championship. Only older fans can remember these days of joy and happiness.

The current Bundesliga season started with much hope but after only a few weeks in the competition the fans came down to earth again. Schalke drew seven of its games and often failed to take crucial opportunities to claim the 3 points. That is why the club is already nine points behind Bundesliga leader Bayern Munich four matchdays before the Bundesliga goes into its winter break. We will see whether Schalke can get back on track again or not.