I am a high school German teacher. We are rewriting our curriculum for German 4 right now and I am tasked with doing a unit on sports in Germany. I'm going to focus mainly on the Bundesliga and the Mens National Team, but I would like to go a bit more into the general sporting culture of Germany. I have a basic knowledge of some stuff, but most of what I know is focused around Fußball. So, with that said, if anyone living in Germany could give me a hand with this, I would appreciate it a lot. What are the most popular sports after soccer? How common is it for people to join sports clubs? What are your personal experiences with playing/viewing sports in Germany? and anything else you might think is relevant. I want my students to have a really good grasp of German culture, and I'm viewing this as a learning experience for myself as well, so I'm looking forward to hearing whatever any of you have to say. vielen Dank!
For the soccer part of your lesson, I recommend reading Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger's "Tor! The Story of German Football." You'll learn a little about gymnastics too, the most popular German sport in the 19th century!
The German gymnastics movement is a pretty important part of modern German history - gymnastics were highly ideologized at the time. Soccer didn't reach mainstream popularity until the 1920s (cricket and rugby also used to be roughly on the level of soccer popularitywise in the late 19th, early 20th century, but faded then). In the Weimar Republic boxing and track cycling were insanely popular as well. Not much time now, so in short: - Germans join clubs as if their life would depend on it. It's a cultural thing. Roughly one third of the population is member in a sports club organized in the German sports association (27 million people according to wikipedia). - After soccer the most popular team sports are (probably in that order): handball, ice hockey, basketball, volleyball. Especially the first three are also important as professional spectator sports. - Germans also love shooting. Gun clubs are an important cultural phenomenon as well.
Besides these I would add formula one, boxing, ski-jumping, biathlon, tennis, golf and field hockey to the list of popular sports in Germany, in no particular order. It always depends on how successful a German athlete performs in certain disciplines. In the late 80`s and 90´s tennis was very popular amongst the German population because of Boris Becker and Michael Stich, while nowadays players like Tommy Haas, Philipp Kohlschreiber or Nicola Kiefer aren´t good enough to compete with the best on an international level. Tennis is more liked to play than to watch in Germany, same can be said for golf, where with the exception of Bernhard Langer no famous sportsman appeared in recent history. Some people say that Formula One has hit it´s peak with Michael Schumacher, who was, without a doubt, one of the best drivers ever seen. Today there are five Germans (Sebastian Vettel, Nick Heidfeild, Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock, Adrian Sutil) building the leading nationality in F1, which obviously does no harm to the popularity of this sport. Considering this it´s not surprising that every single race is and has been broadcasted on German free-tv for several years now. I personally give a sh#t about ski-jumping or biathlon. The latter is one of the most boring things to watch, it could even be more boring than American football or baseball...NOT But as Germans have always been quite sucessful in winter sports, they were popular within the people. Field hockey, i believe it´s only a womens sport in America, is like golf and tennis a sport which is preferably played rather than watched. Our NT winning the Bejing Olympics increased the popularity of the sport, but the focus didn´t last too long, as you don´t hear much about field hockey in the media. In my opinion the list of most popular sports to watch after football would look like this: handball (NT and Bundesliga) formula 1 ice hockey (marco sturm etc.) basketball(dirk nowitzki) boxing (klitschkos, although not German, but well-liked)
I taught third-semester German this past spring semester at University of South Carolina and got my class interested in the Bundesliga by having them pick a team and then follow them throughout the semester. I put up a Kicker Stecktabelle on the wall and the students then had to update the standings every monday. Concerning the team they chose, they had to tell me the result each week. Sie haben gegen _________ gewonnen/verloren/unentschieden gespielt, etc. For their information they mostly used www.bundesliga.de, which of course is also in English. I started the project off without a lot of expectations but they really got into it, and were very curious not only about the league, but also about the Pokal, releagation and promotion and the Uefa Cup. In fact, I had one Bremen fan and one Hamburg fan in the class, so that added a bit more spice to proceedings towards the end of the semester.
Yep, you can't forget Turnvater Jahn. You could also mention the badass Karl Follen brough turnen to Harvard when he became the first ever German instructor there in 1825.
This also looks pretty cool [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCH9wlSrBqc"]YouTube - Transantlantic Soccer Bridge[/ame]
finally, I have never used this DVD in class but Landon Donovan speaking German plays a prominent role in the "Ausländische Stars der Bundesliga" section. http://www.langenscheidt.de/katalog/titel_deutschlernen_mit_kick_2833_0.html
I'd switch handball and formula 1 as spectator sports. TV ratings for F1 are still very high. As far as I know, even DTM races are watched by more people than the top Handball match. For me it's still unbelievable that cities in the US can have three or four teams of different sports that draw a crowd up to 20.000. And one shouldn't forget that except for American Football they all have much more games than here. Also watching sports on TV is a much bigger deal in the US.
Lets bring in some statistics, that strengthen some said thigs. Concerning sport club members these are the 3 biggest sports in Germany (numbers from 2006): 1. Football 6.4 million people organised in clubs 2. Gymnastics 5.1 million people 3. Fitness 4.2 million people (Fitness clubs included) 4. Tennis 1.8 million people 5. Shooting ? 6. Athletics ? In total 27.3 million Germans are members of sportclubs, that´s more than 1/3 of the population. source: Geo Wissen
Right, Mitglieder von Sportvereinen. Link to the statistics. The percentual numbers in brackets show the percentual increase/decrease of sportsmen registered for clubs in comparison to 1995. For example football had 12% more registered sportsmen in 2006, while the number of tennis players decreased during that time by 29%.
If you want statistics like this I'd go to the source directly. http://www.dosb.de/fileadmin/fm-dosb/downloads/2008.3_Bestandserhebung.pdf There you have an extensive rundown of membership numbers of the various German sports association. And the German sports development report (in English) might also be of interest: http://www.dosb.de/fileadmin/fm-dosb/arbeitsfelder/wiss-ges/Dateien/Siegel-Germany_SEB07_English.pdf
A summary of membership numbers in English, I included all with 400.000 or more members, and selected sports (mostly team sports) with less than that. Soccer 6,6 M Gymnastics 5,0 M Tennis 1,59 M Shooting 1,46 M Athletics 891 K Handball 842 K Mountaineering 783 K Equestrian 752 K Fishing 653 K Table Tennis 617 K Skiing 606 K Swimming 575 K Golf 552 K Volleyball 484 K Disabled Sports 414 K ... Basketball 191 K Field hockey 71 K Boxing 62 K Football 33 K Ice hockey 29 K Baseball 26 K Motorsports 16 K Rugby 10 K
Stats from 2006/07, analyzed are club teams depending on their average attendance numbers. Listed are the top 50 teams, any position that's not filled are soccer teams. #31: Kölner Haie (ice hockey) #32: Adler Mannheim (ice hockey) #37: THW Kiel (handball) #38: Hamburg Freezers (ice hockey) #41: VfL Gummersbach (handball) #42: SG Kronau/Östringen (handball) #44: Hamburger SV (handball) #46: DEG Metro Stars (ice hockey) #48: Brose Baskets Bamberg (basketball) #49: Alba Berlin (basketball) #50: Hannover Scorpions (ice hockey) From 51-100 you have many ice hockey, handball and basketball clubs. Other sports do not make the top 100
That should be HSV Hamburg, though - short for Handballsportverein Hamburg. They use the Hamburger SV logo, as they cooperate with Hamburger SV for marketing reasons, but they are completely different clubs.
all of my classes at all levels choose a club to follow each year. mostly the 2nd, 3rd and 4th year students stick with the teams hey chose 1st year unless those teams have been relegated. although some of them insist on staying with their relegated teams. i haven't been able to think of good activities to do with them though. the 1st years have to do a few things like describing their team's uniform when they learn clothes and colours, but it's harder to find more in depth activities for the more advanced students. i like the idea yoiu just posted. i'll look into doing that. i may have them write a few match summaries too.
Why don't you let your pupils give short history lessons about their clubs in the following years. The foundation, the club in the Nazi time, post-war development etc. I think they could do several short talks as most clubs are around 80-100 years. Other topics could be short presentations of the most famous players and coaches of their clubs or the club's various stadiums. I would think there are a lot of things they could do. Or maybe later something about the German NT or the German championship. They could see the connection between the various clubs, the players and overall dynamic of soccer in Germany at various points in time. What about the Women's Bundesliga? They are not as high profile as the men but it is one of the better women's league in the world.
awesome idea. especially because this will be coming right after the german history unit. i will definitely do that as a project.
I'm a bit late on this, but I wanted to look something up first and forgot about it . Just wanted to add that I think that they didn't include all sports here. In American Football the Braunschweig Lions had an average attendance of 6.194 in 2007 which should probably put them into the top 100 (they actually had even higher attendances in the past, but the attendance of the entire German Football League is declining currently). The Kiel Baltic Hurricanes are another football team with a shot at the top-100 (although maybe not in 2007 (2.313 then), in the last two years they had an average from 4-5000 though). Those are pretty much the only American football teams in Germany with attendances like this, the other teams are usually in the 500-1000 range these days). And of course in 2007 there still was the NFL Europe - all German teams in there should make the Top 100, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Düsseldorf even had (soccer) Bundesliga level attendances.
I also want to expand on it. You could also get them to get to know the team and where the different players are from. Also, injury reports could be used for body parts perhaps .
Frankly I don't think German football or sports offers much material worthy of school curricula. It's mostly just popular entertainment and physical exercise just like in the rest of the Western world, so who cares whether we play/watch more ice hockey or more handball or which club is currently leading etc.. Near-exclusive list of aspects worth mentioning IMHO: 1. Role of the German national football team as an unusual focal point of pride and as a confidence-raiser in 1954, 1990, 2006. (I don't think that any nations except Brazil and Argentina are more obsessed with a single national sports team. About Italy, I'm not sure. As far as esp. France/England/Spain are concerned, I am.) 2. Special role of gymnastics and rifle clubs as movements underlying Germany's shift to nationalism and militarisation in the 19th century. Their special role has faded (irrespective of listed membership numbers...rifle clubs are drinking societies these days, "gymnastics" includes a variety of non-traditional activities such as general fitness groups) 3. Traditional organisation of German professional and amateur sports in democratic membership organisations as opposed to commercial franchises or school teams.