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Page 1 — “No one else does it but us”
Page 2 – Sports clubs are increasingly becoming fitness centers Page 3 – One in five children in Germany is overweight or even obese Table tennis in Altenburger Land © Felix Adler for ZEIT ONLINE
If you listen to Andreas Vogel for an evening, you wonder how many hours there might be in his day. Vogel, firm handshake, inconspicuous glasses, is chairman of TSV 1876 Nobitz, a normal sports club in Germany in the best sense of the word. Vogel takes care of funding applications for new material, fights for new trainers, and manages the club’s administration. His main job is as a tax consultant and runs his law firm.
He asks to go to the sports office in the multi-purpose hall in Nobitz, Altenburger Land in Thuringia. It’s tidy and smells a little, well, like a gym. “I brought reinforcements with me,” says Vogel and points to Ramona Ritter, who sits behind the desk and seems like someone who, in this context, is always described as the club’s good soul. She takes care of everything that needs to be done administratively. Voluntary, of course.
So, Ms. Ritter, Mr. Vogel, how are the sports clubs in Germany doing right now? “Phew,” sighs the club president and volunteer. Big question. The short answer: “You can always complain,” says Vogel. He doesn’t want to do that, but then he wants to tell you what’s bothering him. Ramona Ritter often nods during the conversation and adds facts and figures.
The club chairman Andreas Vogel © Felix Adler for ZEIT ONLINE
German sports clubs are an institution in this country. The numbers are hard to believe: almost 27.9 million children, young people and adults are organized in the more than 86,000 clubs. Almost every third person is a member of a sports club.
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There are great expectations placed on sports clubs: They should create social cohesion, turn young people into responsible citizens, represent democratic values and, by the way, produce new gold medal winners for the next Olympic Games by the day after tomorrow.
All this with rising prices, falling economic performance and a society that is more tired of exercise and that, when it does exercise, increasingly wants it to be non-binding and flexible. How is this supposed to work when society is getting older and social engagement – as is often claimed – is becoming less and less? Do sports clubs like TSV Nobitz have a future and what might that look like?
“We still have enough members,” says club president Andreas Vogel. He says it’s relatively constant at around 450, sometimes a few more, sometimes a few less. The only question is: how much longer? TSV Nobitz is a popular sports club. There is, among other things, a large table tennis section, bowling, a Zumba group, recently an archery section and even medieval swordsmen. But only a few departments have young people.
The football players, for example, do not have a youth team. That’s where the first problem lies. At least that’s how Vogel sees it: “There are football clubs in Germany and there is everything else. We belong to everything else.” The media attention and therefore the money flows primarily into the Germans’ favorite sport, many others fall behind. Because football is taking up more and more space, Vogel fears that other sports could have an increasingly difficult time.
If you listen to Andreas Vogel for an evening, you wonder how many hours there might be in his day. Vogel, firm handshake, inconspicuous glasses, is chairman of TSV 1876 Nobitz, a normal sports club in Germany in the best sense of the word. Vogel takes care of funding applications for new material, fights for new trainers, and manages the club’s administration. His main job is as a tax consultant and runs his law firm.
He asks to go to the sports office in the multi-purpose hall in Nobitz, Altenburger Land in Thuringia. It’s tidy and smells a little, well, like a gym. “I brought reinforcements with me,” says Vogel and points to Ramona Ritter, who sits behind the desk and seems like someone who, in this context, is always described as the club’s good soul. She takes care of everything that needs to be done administratively. Voluntary, of course.
