Why do non-Jewish football fans chant “Yid Army” or wave “Super Jews” banners—especially in support of clubs that are not Jewish?
The Making of “Jew Clubs” explores how four major European football clubs—FC Bayern Munich, FK Austria Vienna, Ajax Amsterdam, and Tottenham Hotspur—came to be seen as “Jew Clubs,” even though they have never officially identified as Jewish.
In this transnational study, Pavel Brunssen traces how both Jewish and non-Jewish actors perform Jewishness, antisemitism, and philosemitism within European football cultures over the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawing on a wide array of primary sources—from fan chants and matchday rituals to media portrayals and club histories—the book reveals how football stadiums have become unexpected stages for negotiating memory, identity, and historical trauma.
Offering a new approach to Holocaust memory, sports history, and Jewish studies, The Making of “Jew Clubs” shows how football cultures reflect and reshape Europe’s conflicted relationship with its Jewish past.
Early Praise
A masterful comparative study that shows that sports is crucial to fully understand the modern Jewish experience and the history of antisemitism.
Michael brenner, LMU München & American University
Brunssen’s well-researched and theoretically astute book shows how this strange contemporary phenomenon reveals essential insights into the ongoing European effort to come to terms with a difficult past. A fascinating discussion of the role of the ‘Jew’ in the European imagination and a valuable contribution to the study of the politics of memory.
Maurice Samuels, Yale university
A pioneering study of the intersection between memory cultures and collective identities in post-1945 European football. A fascinating exploration of the performance of Judaism in the virtually Jewish stadium and of representations of Judaism in the absence of Jews.
raanan rein, University of Florida
In this fascinating study, Brunssen tackles an intriguing phenomenon: many major European soccer clubs are viewed as Jewish, with fans who celebrate that label and fans of competing teams who insult these “Jewish clubs” with antisemitic epithets. Brunssen offers a bold and nuanced interpretation of this singular case of transnational, popular philosemitism.
Ari Joskowicz, vanderbilt university
Reviews
Pavel Brunssens „The Making of ‚Jew Clubs‘“ ist ein herausragendes, interdisziplinär fundiertes Werk, das nicht nur eine Leerstelle der Forschung füllt, sondern auch eindrucksvoll zeigt, auf welch interessante und komplexe Weise der Fußball ein Aushandlungsort kollektiver Erinnerung und Identität ist. Mit analytischer Schärfe und persönlicher Leidenschaft gelingt Brunssen eine Studie, die gleichermaßen wissenschaftlich außerordentlich gelungen wie gesellschaftlich relevant ist.
Julian Sieler, H-Soz-Kult
[Pavel Brunssen’s The Making of ‘Jew Clubs’ is an outstanding and rigorously interdisciplinary work that not only fills a significant gap in the scholarship but also demonstrates with impressive clarity how football functions as a complex site of negotiating collective memory and identity. With analytical precision and intellectual passion, Brunssen offers a study that is both academically exceptional and socially vital.]
480 Seiten ist Brunssens Werk stark, die Geschichten der vier Vereine werden umfassend dargelegt. Es geht aber weit darüber hinaus.
Moritz Ettlinger, Der Standard
[Brunssen’s work is 480 pages long, and the stories of the four clubs are comprehensively presented. But it goes far beyond that.]
Darüber hinaus erzählt Brunssen ausführlich die Geschichten der vier Vereine nach, wobei er sich auf historische Quellen stützt und tradiertes Wissen auch kritisch hinterfragt.
Jan Tölva, Ballesterer
[Brunssen provides detailed accounts of the four clubs, drawing on historical sources while critically examining established narratives.]
So schafft es Brunssen, differenziert darzulegen, warum nichtjüdische Fans anfangen, ihre Klubs als »Juden« anzufeuern – und wie ambivalent die Reaktionen von Jüdinnen und Juden darauf sein können.
Monty Ott, Jüdische Allgemeine
[Brunssen compellingly explains why non-Jewish supporters come to celebrate their clubs as ‘Jews,’—and reveals how ambivalent Jewish reactions to this phenomenon often are.]
Vier hochkomplexe Fallstudien also, von denen jede einzelne wertvoll ist.
martin krauss, taz
[Four highly complex case studies, every one of them a significant contribution.]
Brunssen’s exploration moves the “Jew club” identification between an adoption and an appropriation of Judaism, which unavoidably points to the gloomy symbol-ism of ethno-centered incitement to violence. Alongside its obvious contribution to the study of Holocaust commemoration and Jewish studies, Brunssen also addresses sports research.
Sophia Solomon, Contemporary Jewry
Pavel Brunssen has written an outstanding book.
Martin Liepach, Football makes history