The Turning Season: DDR-Oberliga Revisited

by Michael Wagg

In The Turning Season, Michael Wagg goes in search of hidden histories and footballing ghosts from before the fall of the Berlin Wall. He revisits the 14 clubs that made up the 1989 DDR-Oberliga, East Germany's top flight. From Aue in the Erzgebirge mountains to Rostock on the Baltic Sea, this quirky account of his whistle-stop tour is for fans who know that football clubs are the beating hearts of the places they play for. There are portraits of the lower levels as well as the big league, stories of then and now that celebrate the characters he met pitch-side. There's Mr Schmidt, who's found a magical fix for the scoreboard at Stahl Brandenburg; Karl Drössler, who captained Lokomotive Leipzig against Eusébio's Benfica; and the heroes of Magdeburg's European triumph, last seen dancing in white bath robes, now pulling in to a dusty car park by the River Elbe. The Turning Season turns its gaze on East German football's magnificent peculiarity, with 14 enchanting stories from a lost league in a country that disappeared.

Genres: Football, Sports, Nonfiction, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2021

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a good book in here. In fact, there are several, and that's the problem. The idea is great, but unfocused. There's no overarching narrative that runs as a thread through the book. There's no sense of the Oberliga itself, and what's left is, sadly, not what was promised.

[Graeme Whitton · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is pretty awful. As someone who just loves the more obscure highways and bye-ways of world football I was really looking forward to it but it's a sad let down.

Meandering, not really very informative and sooooooo badly written I only got about half way through before scrapping it. There's a great story waiting to be told but not by this author.

[Owen · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very personal account of this journey and not to my taste I'm afraid. It didn't really provide much background about the football clubs or the league, but neither was it really the kind of insightful travel writing I enjoy. Long digressions about measuring the angle of floodlights with a compass or descriptions of the inside of a scoreboard. Maybe I just didn't get it.

[Arild Nygaard · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the weakest books I've read in a while. The initial premise held promise, and it had the potential to be an intriguing story. However, the author seemed to lose his way in mundane details, making the reading experience somewhat tiresome. While some stories were inspiring, overall, I anticipated more from this book.

[Gabe Swain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty poor, could've been fascinating but this bloke got far too hung up on uninteresting quirks. Kept having to flick back to the beginning of the chapter to remind myself which club he was talking about.

[Kevin Burke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't really "the DDR revisited" so much as "the DDR 30 years on", effectively a series of 14 groundhopping trips covering the clubs in the last East German top flight. The problem with it is that the real interest is in the past, but too often the stories are of relatively mundane items such as one club's unusual scoreboard or another's leaning floodlights - these could be any clubs. The piece on Dynamo Berlin focuses mainly on how close the western club Hertha Berlin were, and doesn't really explore why people would support (or still support) the team of the Stasi. And a strange vignette about being a spy which takes up half the Chemnitz chapter didn't seem to make any real sense.

There are some interesting snippets when talking to former East German players - accounts of sudden defections and the difficulties some players faced adjusting to a new life after reunification - but they're too few. One interviewee, Uwe Karte, has "many [...] strange stories", but we don't really hear them. The only really amazing paragraph - this in a book on East Germany, a highly unusual place - when Axel Schulz, a three-times capped East German international, says that he wouldn't want to be a player "because with the the pressures of social media the players are watched all the time now."

The idea that someone who lived under the Stasi reckons Twitter is worse is a remarkable one. You'd imagine a book on a place like East Germany has to have more such eye-opening revelations, but this one doesn't. A bit of a missed chance really.

[Richard Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

A real marmite book if ever there was one - it isn’t a history book and if you come in looking for something that is going to tell you a lot about East German football, you’ll leave disappointed. As a travel book, it is VERY unfocused - while the passion the author holds his trip in is obvious, some narrative tangents really harm the book. On the plus side, the paucity of work on this subject means that the book always has a subject interesting enough to keep you turning the page.

[Dan Howarth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me a little while to settle in the style of this book but it hit the spot for me as a fan of German football. It's part travelogue, part history book, part memoir.

Whilst I really enjoyed this book and the personal stories involved, I feel that the right wing activities involving fans of a number of clubs here were glossed over. Other than that, this is a great read.

[Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want a book which will increase your knowledge of the Obaliga during 1989/90 this probably isn't the book for you.


Truly awful doesn't begin to explain how poor this book is and you have to question how it was allowed to be published with such a misleading title and, also, how genuine some of the 5 star ratings are.

If you haven't bought this already, don't.

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at DDR East Germany in the year it was subsumed and forced into a single Germany by its over powerful Western neighbour. Interesting insight into football set up in East Germany, even for non football fans.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 3 out of 5]

The historical facts about East German football are excellent, some of the other writing tends to wander off in different directions

[Jamie Langan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reasonable read but very much the personal musings of the authors travels around modern Germany rather than a history of East German football.

[Andrew Guttridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

More a collection of articles on different clubs who played in the old East Germany. I don't think I learnt anything from this book about the old Oberliga and it contained more anecdotes about the different teams that competed in it.

There is a really good chapter on the old Dynamo Dresden playerJörg Stübner. Which did hit the mark, but unfortunately most didn't.

Would be interested to know why Union Berlin were omitted from the author's travels considering their recent success is the Bundesliga actually made me interested in East German football.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might not be the best written book at times, but the author’s curios fascination with his subject matter really shines through and there are some fascinating tales here, even if the strands sometimes get a bit confusing. Perhaps only for anyone interested in German football, but if you are, it’s worth a read.