Wolfsburg fight

A word about the work

HHAU004
At the end of the 80s, Harald Hauswald worked on an assignment for a West German magazine wanting to show the state of hooliganism in East German football. It was a phenomenon that, according to the local authorities’ official line, didn’t exist in East Germany but remained the prerogative of a depraved Western society. For the assignment he met supporters of Union Berlin FC, thus marking the beginning of an adventure that would last for more than 25 years. Harald never left them again and followed them regularly for many years to tell the story of Germany through them.
This image shows a clash beween Union Berlin supporters and the police during an away match in Wolfsburg in 1992.

After my first feature on Union Berlin, I decided to carry on with the story. I’d met and managed to get accepted by, the leaders of the hard-core supporter groups. I regularly went to the stadium in Berlin, but also travelled with them to away matches. I lived close to this violence all those years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Young Germans expressed their unease by fighting rival gangs of supporters and/or sometimes the police, all over Germany. There was even a sort of code of honour that was both very serious and responsible, and a bit childish too, that amused me a lot : You weren’t allowed to kick a rival who had fallen to the ground, except if you were wearing trainers…
As a result of these photos I was arrested after this clash at Wolfsburg, but despite this managed to hide and save some of the films.
I was detained and then freed after the intervention of Union supporters who demonstrated in front of the police station. They screamed that they wouldn’t leave without me, and, to avoid a riot, the police let me go.

Jean-Denis’s choice

Robert Capa used to say « if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough ». It is fair to say that he has found a disciple in Harald. I can’t think of any other photo of fighting taken like this, with a 50mm lens, in the heart of the scrum (using a 50mm lens he must have been less than 1 metre away from the people fighting in the foreground). Harald Hauswald always loved being close to the people and events unfolding in front of him, and every one of his photos tells the real story. But this photo is amazing.