SAMSTAG 15:30

There's a real sense of unity between club and supporter in Germany and that sentiment probably echoes louder around the Millerntor Stadion than at just about any other ground we cover in our guides. Home games provide an outlet for people from all walks of life to come together as one; and the eclectic mix of people you'll meet here (transvestites, students, dockers, outcasts, free spirits, tourists, anarchists, artists ... even prostitutes) will be unmatched on any terrace in world football.

Standing in the shadow of a huge flak tower - an omnipresent reminder of Germany's fascist past - the Millerntor Stadion rose from the ashes of Hamburg which lay in ruins after World War 2. St. Pauli's pre-war home had been destroyed by Allied bombing but amidst the devastation, a group of fans were determined to see their club play competitive football again. With their spirit unbroken by mile-upon-mile of bombed-out streets, they mobilised to build a new stadium at Ernst Thalmann Straße next to the vast Heiligengeistfeld. Against all the odds, given the appalling conditions and lack of infrastructure in the shattered city, the work was completed in record time and the ground was inaugurated on 17th November 1946 with a match against FC Schalke 04 (which St. Pauli won 1-0). 

The fans who had worked so hard were duly rewarded for their efforts as 'their' stadium became home to the post-war Die Wunder-Elf  team before welcoming Brazilian club Santos and an 18 year old Pele - star of the previous year's World Cup in Sweden - for a friendly match against a Hamburg XI in 1959. By the early 1960s however, St. Pauli were on the move again as the stadium lovingly built brick-by-brick by fans just a few years earlier was requisitioned for the 1963 International Gartenbau-Austellung  (International Horticultural Exposition).

After consideration had been given to the idea of relocating to another part of Hamburg, the decision was taken to build another stadium just a few hundred yards away across the Heiligengeistfeld. Construction of the Millerntor (named after a gate in the city wall that once protected Hanseatic Hamburg) began in 1960 and it was designed to hold 32,000 with open terracing on three sides of the ground and a covered Haupttribune (main stand). It opened on time but unfortunately the builders had neglected to install drainage for the pitch and despite being one of the most modern stadiums in the country, the notorious Hamburg weather turned the playing surface into a quagmire by the end of 1961. Attempts were made to repair the sorry state of the pitch which included filling 500 large holes drilled in the pitch with sand before a match against VfV Heidelsheim in January 1962. This was repeated with equally dismal results in May of that year and led to the press referring to the club as 'Sand Pauli'. Finally, after defender Heinz Deiniger broke his ankle on the surface, the club effectively went on strike - refusing to play at the Millerntor until the drainage had been installed and the pitch repaired. The city authorities relented and after a period playing at SV Viktoria's Hoheluftstadion, the Kiezkickers returned to their revamped home which officially opened in November 1963.

In 1970, the stadium was renamed the Wilhelm Koch Stadion in honour of the club's ex-president before it transpired in 1998 that he'd been a member of the far-right NSDAP during World War 2. Espousing an emphatic anti-fascist stance, the Millerntor reverted back to its original name (St. Pauli continue to contribute to a national fund compensating Jewish people forced to work under the Nazi regime) and the club followed this up by making an unexpected but welcome promise never to sell stadium naming rights to sponsors in the future. 

Talk of redevelopment was never far from the table however and in the late 1980s, just as St. Pauli were in the process of reinventing themselves as a leftist, anti-corporate club; plans were drawn up for the Millerntor to be incorporated into a new multi-sport venue called the Sport-Dome that would have also included a shopping mall, underground car park and a hotel. Unhappy at the prospect of losing the Millerntor's atmospheric terraces to the bland conformity of an all-seater arena, fans began a campaign which, added to concerns about funding and the new arena's impact on the surrounding district, forced then-club president Otto Paulick to kick the proposals into touch.

Despite a few modifications over the years and the construction of a temporary seating area above the Gegengerade in 1988, the stadium remained largely unchanged since opening and its ramshackle, outdated facilities led the DFB (German FA) to give notice that unless extensive refurbishment of the ground was carried out, the Millerntor's stadium licence would be revoked. In order to comply, St. Pauli announced a major redevelopment programme in 2006 that would see the stands gradually demolished and rebuilt over eight years.

The work got underway the following year with the Südtribüne the first to get a make-over and
its impressive glass and brick facade can be seen as you approach the ground from Budapester Straße. The vibrant red, white and brown livered stand is a lively place to be on a matchday with Ultrà Sankt Pauli  leading the call and response chanting from its modest sized terrace below a tier of seating above. The Haupttribüne (main stand) was next up a couple of years later and it's a smart single tier, all-seater affair dominated by corporate hospitality facilities. A double tier of VIP boxes (more than twice the number originally planned - much to the unease of the St. Pauli faithful) runs along the back of the stand and luxurious padded executive seats occupy much of the prime seating area between both penalty boxes as St. Pauli walk a tightrope between expanding the club and not exploiting or alienating its vibrant, very vocal core of supporters.
 
Corporate sales in the Hauptribüne however gave St Pauli the business model needed to redevelop the iconic yet crumbling Gegengerade (referred to by fans as 'the back straight') running the length of the pitch on the Heiligengeistfeld side of the ground. It was on this terrace that veteran punk Doc Mabuse first raised the Jolly Roger flag which became a countercultural icon and helped establish St. Pauli as a 'Kult' club. Three-quarters of the 13,000 capacity pre-fab concrete and steel stand is still taken up with terracing, and the words 'FC ST PAULI 1910 MILLERNTOR' are spelt out in white amongst the otherwise brown seats in the relatively narrow tier perched above.
 
The Nordtribune was the final piece of the jigsaw and is very similar in design to the Sudtribüne although the split between those watching the match on their feet and those sitting down is a more equal one. 'St. Pauli Away' is a fixture many opposition fans look for and so half of this stand is given over to visiting clubs to create a considerably sized Guest Block.
 
In 2012 St Pauli became the first professional club to create a creche in their stadium when it opened the 'Kita Piratenest' (Pirate's Nest) between the Südtribüne and Haupttribüne. The floodlights have been mounted on four distinctive masts above the Haupttribüne and Gegengerade, and a modern video screen replaced the iconic manually operated old scoreboard in the south-east corner to complete the look of the stadium.

The result is a football-only venue inspired by classic British grounds, and the red brick which dominates the revamped Millerntor is reflective of the proud working class, bohemian district that the club represents. The gritty activism ingrained in its fanbase hasn't been sanitised either with the anodyne concourses found elsewhere brought to life with graffiti characters, quotes and 'punk football' slogans (“no human is illegal”, “football has no gender”) adorning the walls. The Millerntor is certainly not your average football stadium!