KSC Fans take a Walk on the Wild Side!

Blue and Green stand Toe to Toe

As if KSC Fans did not have enough prob­lems with the per­for­mance of their team on the pitch and star­ing rel­e­ga­tion in the face they are also hav­ing prob­lems out­side of the Sta­dium. There was an inci­dent in the Karl­sruher Hardt­wald between the Police and the Fans of KSC recently. www.stadionwelt.de talked to Fan­pro­jekt Karl­sruhe leader Volker Kören­zig about what happened.

Sta­dion­welt: Prior to the Bun­desliga Game against Arminia Biele­feld the Fan Pro­jekt Karl­sruhe and the Sup­port­ers Karl­sruhe were invited again to „Zam nausdappe“(Walking or Walk in together). What is that exactly?

Kören­zig: We have been coor­di­nat­ing the „zam naus­dappe“ for the past six years. We bring together KSC Fans at the Fan­pro­jekt, gen­er­ally about 300 peo­ple. About 90% belong to the active Fan Scene and the other 10% are Friends, Acquain­tances or just have gen­eral inter­est to par­tic­i­pate, reg­u­lar KSC Fans if you will. About half of those then take the 45 minute walk to the Wild­park­sta­dion and the rest ride on bicy­cles or drive. Like I said, we thought of this march before Home games about six years ago and coor­di­nated the effort with the Police and the City of Karl­sruhe. The „zam naus­dappe“ is an action designed to edu­cate and pre­vent vio­lence at our Soc­cer games.

Sta­dion­welt: That did not hap­pen last Sat­ur­day the way it was intended. What happened?

Kören­zig: That’s true. After about 30 Min­utes we came to the Ten­nis Courts at the DJK Ost. From there the path goes through the woods and the going is slower because the path is nar­row. We saw some Rental Vans parked near the path and the Ten­nis Courts and that was a bit strange, since it was a Sat­ur­day after­noon, but there is another School facil­ity nearby so it would have been pos­si­ble that there was an event going on. As we got closer we saw some peo­ple that appeared to be trim­ming trees in a rather unco­or­di­nated man­ner. I was curios and wanted to take a look but that never hap­pened as a small truck was com­ing up the path behind us with some speed. When it reached the Fans the truck stopped and about 25 to 30 BFE Offi­cers (Beweis­sicherungs und Fes­t­nah­meein­heit = Spe­cial Police Unit) jumped from the back. This Unit imme­di­ately and aggres­sively sur­rounded the group and forced us against the fences of the ten­nis courts. Totally con­fused I real­ized that there was another group of about 25 BFE Offi­cers and sev­eral reg­u­lar Police with Police Dogs behind the ten­nis courts. While we were sur­rounded there for ten min­utes another six 9 Pas­sen­ger Busses from the Karl­sruher Police drove up.

Sta­dion­welt: That sounds like a bad movie…

Kören­zig: …it was an unbe­liev­able Sit­u­a­tion. One of the Fans stated he thinks the peo­ple work­ing on the trees were Police as well, but I don’t know that for sure and was focused on the Truck and the BFE Offi­cers. I do know that the Chain­saws and other equip­ment went silent as soon as the whole thing started hap­pen­ing. It seems plau­si­ble though as the Police stated in the Badis­chen Neuen Nachrichten (Local News) that under­cover oper­a­tives were used for this action.

Sta­dion­welt: What hap­pened to the KSC-Fans?

Kören­zig: We were all held for some time against the fence by the Ten­nis Courts and each one of us was taken one at a time escorted by two Police Offi­cers to have our Iden­tity checked and we were filmed as well. They actu­ally made us lean against the Car, empty all of our pock­ets and pat­ted us down. It really looked like an old movie. I think this took about 45 min­utes given the amount of Fans that had to go through this and then we were allowed to resume our march to the Stadium.

Sta­dion­welt: Any idea what the Police were try­ing to accom­plish with this, espe­cially since they checked each and every­one of the par­tic­i­pants of the march?

Kören­zig: Offi­cer Plate stated over his Megaphon that this had to do with the inci­dents after the Derby against Stuttgart, since there were some dif­fi­cul­ties between KSC Fans and the Police. The Police in Karl­sruhe alleged pub­licly that about 1000 KSC Fans were involved. Where these alleged 1000 prob­lem Fans came from is a mys­tery to me. Accord­ing to the Police there were only 96 Fans at the Hardt­wald so I can­not under­stand the cor­re­la­tion. Our Ultras that were there are all known to the Police through their con­tacts in the Fan scene anyway.

Sta­dion­welt: How did the KSC Fans react dur­ing this incident?

Kören­zig: Our Ultras and every­one else that was there deserve praise as no one became aggres­sive and coop­er­ated with the Police the entire time. The Fans let them do what they needed to do and sadly this type of thing has become com­mon­place in Ger­many. Maybe not quite on this scale but the stereo­typ­ing of Fans has reached a sad new level and many “put up with it” now.

Sta­dion­welt: What are your thoughts about this Police effort?

Kören­zig: I am strictly against it and don’t see any way to jus­tify it. I have never expe­ri­enced any­thing like this on such a scale and never want to ever expe­ri­ence it again. Like I said, among the group were reg­u­lar Fans and also Youth’s. We have a U-18 Bus that we offer for away matches like in Düs­sel­dorf or Lev­erkusen and some of the par­tic­i­pants reg­is­tered for the march with us before we left. Some of these guys are only 13 or 14 years old and then have to be exposed to some­thing like this. That their impres­sion of the Police is not pos­i­tive after an inci­dent like this is under­stand­able. In their age bracket this can really be a bad expe­ri­ence and espe­cially if this hap­pens to a first time vis­i­tor. I have to say there were dif­fer­ences amongst the Police as well. The reg­u­lar Karl­sruhe Offi­cers worked well with the coop­er­a­tive Fans while the BFE Unit stayed masked the entire time and was very aggres­sive toward the Fans, even when check­ing an indi­vid­u­als Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Why the BFE had to stay masked no one was able to say. It was totally ran­dom and one of the Board Mem­bers of the Sup­port­ers Karl­sruhe had to expe­ri­ence it as well, and he is hardly a vio­lent per­son or extrem­ist or what­ever the Police was look­ing for in the Hardt­wald that day.

Sta­dion­welt: Why is there no men­tion of this in the Media release from the Police?

Kören­zig: That is a valid ques­tion. Maybe they do not want the gen­eral pub­lic to know how they are deal­ing with Soc­cer Fans. We were lucky that among the crowd was a Free Lance Jour­nal­ist who decided to pub­lish this inci­dent in the press. We also had an Attor­ney among the group of Fans that was march­ing to the Sta­dium that day who is tak­ing a close look at all of this this. Some­thing like this should never hap­pen again, it does not mat­ter where.