Supporters’ behaviour dominating the headlines usually signifies a most unwelcome story. And it was no different this weekend, with bad news – two deaths and local elections that resembled a blocked Autobahn services toilet, bringing plenty of stinky, brown stuff to the fore – all around. But the considered way that fans, so often derided as unthinking lemmings, reacted to these personal and collective tragedies was truly remarkable.

What happened in Dortmund, Darmstadt and, to a lesser extent, Munich, put football in the shade. Down in Bavaria, the placards regularly held up in the Südkurve can be a bit hit and miss, like the former terrace legend Adolfo Valencia. On Saturday night, however, the Bayern ultras proved astute political commentators unafraid to “put the finger in the wound”, as they say in Germany. They didn’t chose the easy route of attacking the frighteningly successful right-wing parties or their voters but instead focused on the enablers at the top of the political tree, stoking the populist surge.

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“Politicians use incendiary words, the mob throws the molotov cocktails. Pathetic racists - we hate you ” read the first banner, followed by “The intellectual arsonists can be found in [the Bavarian] regional government, too: Seehofer and Herrmann!” The Bavarian prime minister Horst Seehofer, of the conservative CSU, has been one of the harshest critics of the chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, his interior minister Joachim Herrmann has demanded a cap on the number of people let into Germany.

You can argue about cause and effect, of course, but not about the shocking extent of the xenophobic crime wave. In 2015, 76 refugee and asylum seeker homes were targeted in arson attacks. The crowds’ intervention during the regulation 5-0 win over Werder Bremen showed just how far the most diehard Reds supporters have come since the mid-90s, when “Sieg Heil!” chants or the no less catchy “SS, SA, Bavaria!” could still be heard on the terraces. The game against Werder – the club led by the combative Social Democrat Willi Lemke, the arch enemy of Uli Hoeness – used to bring political differences into sharp contrast. FCB and CSU, the all-conquering, conservative Christian Social Union, still both rule with an absolute majority in the Bundesliga and the Bavarian parliament, respectively, but they are no longer interchangeable synonyms with overlapping personnel.

One of the perhaps most welcome effects of the club’s hard-nosed drive toward internationalisation has been the marginalisation of local politicians on the board. They have been mostly edged out by businesspeople, certainly in terms of relative importance. The club have become a lot more politically neutral, while their organised supporters have firmly moved to the centre-left and now often make a stand against homophobia, anti-semitism and fascism of any ilk.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A sign informs the crowd of the death of a fan during the Borussia Dortmund v Mainz match. Photograph: Sascha Schuermann/AFP/Getty Images

While the Bayern fans raised their voice, the 81,000 strong Dortmund crowd made the 2-0 win over Mainz on Sunday the most silent, eerily moving game imaginable. Two fans at the Westfalenstadion had suffered heart attacks during the first half. Medics were able to save a 55-year-old but another man, 80, died. News of the tragedy spread via social media during the break, and the Yellow Wall decided to stop all singing as a mark of respect in the second half. The Mainz fans joined in. At times, you could hear the proverbial pin drop in the huge ground, as sound levels reached Geisterspiel (a game behind closed doors) levels. “On the pitch, we didn’t know what had happened,” said the Dortmund captain Mats Hummels. “Suddenly, the cheers stopped and it was really quiet in the ground. It wasn’t easy to keep your concentration, you suddenly felt like being in a test game, with 30 or 40 people on the sidelines.” Worst of all, however, was the sense that “something bad happened,” added the 27-year-old.

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The situation was similar to that in the Stade de France in November, Hummels thought, when Germany had played the hosts on the evening of the Paris attacks. At the end of the game, the Dortmund fans started singing “You’ll never walk alone”, the club’s unofficial hymn, in memory of the departed, holding up their flags. The BVB players listened with tears in their eyes. Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Freddie Röckenhaus was reminded of “days in the past, when there were many accidents in the former city of steel and mining. The sons and daughters of the miners and steelers no longer face the dangers of heavy industry but a part of the special togetherness that exists in the cities of the Ruhr has steadfastly remained in Dortmund’s stadium.”

“We were all touched,” said the Mainz manager Martin Schmidt, who said he had felt “strange” shouting out instructions in the silent night. “It was still a football game,” said the Swiss coach, but he and the players invariably “felt that they were doing something wrong” when the noise stopped. As it was, everyone did exactly the right thing, a feat that was all the more impressive when you consider the size of the crowd and the fact that it was pulled off organically, instinctively, without anyone following any orders.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Darmstadt fans hold up a photo of the late fan Jonathan ‘Johnny’ Heimes, who died after a long battle against cancer. Photograph: Frank Rumpenhorst/EPA

The Darmstadt fans’ tribute to the late Johnny Heimes before the 2-2 draw with Augsburg was, by contrast, very much pre-planned but no less touching for it. Heimes, 26, was a supporter of the Lilies and a talented tennis player who suffered from a malign brain tumour. Through his fight for survival and charitable activities – he collected money to help other cancer patients – he became a symbol of Darmstadt’s unlikely rise from third division to top flight. Heimes died on Tuesday last week. “Without him, we wouldn’t be talking about the Bundesliga here,” said the manager, Dirk Schuster. A huge banner with Heimes’ face was held up at the Böllenfalltor before kick-off, there was minute’s silence and the fans chanted his name instead of those of the players.

The Augsburg team and supporters, too, joined in the commemoration. It was a heartfelt public demonstration combining sorrow and optimism, the very thing that football does best. Everybody knows that the Bundesliga can be a hotbed of tribalism and aggression. But this weekend, the game proved that it can also be ahead of the curve with the spirit of solidarity and empathy for others which it generates. God knows an increasingly polarised and toxic Germany could certainly do with more of the same.

Results: Hertha 2-0 Schalke, Gladbach 3-0 Frankfurt, Hannover 0-2 Köln, Hoffenheim 1-0 Wolfsburg, Ingolstadt 3-3 Stuttgart, Darmstadt 2-2 Augsburg, Bayern 5-0 Bremen, Leverkusen 1-0 HSV, Dortmund 2-0 Mainz.



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