Transnationality

Even though sports in East Central Europe were closely linked to the concept of nation, at the same time singular conditions fostered the establishment of transnational sports regions and networks that constitute a crossroads of sporting spaces in Europe. This paper will focus primarily on Poland, a country whose imperial divisions and multi-ethnic and heterogeneous demography make it ideally suited to demonstrate the peculiarities of sport and its development in Eastern Europe. Poland did not yet exist as an independent nation state when, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, international contacts in sports intensified, the first international sports organizations emerged, and the international sports community took shape. It was thus deprived from entering the international arena of modern sports, where in most cases national representation was introduced as a basic principle of international competition.

Modern sports in Poland developed within the framework of, and through interaction with, Russia, Prussia and the Habsburg Empire, which had annexed the Polish territories at the end of the eighteenth century and controlled them until the end of the First World War. The establishment and activities of Polish associations and thus also sports organizations were subject to restrictions, especially in territories under Russian control, including cities such as Warsaw or Lodz, and in territories under German control, for example Poznan.Reference Lipoński⁶ Because sports were closely connected with the concept of nation and national identification, sports activities were seen as a threat to the authority of the partitioning powers. Those fears were not without foundation. For many Polish athletes, such as Wacław Kuchar, a famous Polish footballer and athlete of the early twentieth century, sport had clear national connotations (‘Among other things, sport was a way to express one's Polishness’Reference Hałys⁷). The connection between physical culture and the idea of the nation was most obvious in the Polish Sokół movement.Reference Małolepszy⁸ Following the example of the Czech Sokoł movement, the Polish Sokół combined physical exercises with national education. The first Sokół association was founded in Lwow in 1867 and spread initially in the areas of Poland under Habsburg rule. In the German Empire, the Sokół activities that developed from 1885 onwards were kept under close surveillance and subject to severe suppression, while the organization was even prohibited in the Russian part of partitioned Poland.

In Habsburg-ruled Galicia, with its limited autonomy, a liberal association law, comparatively free press, Polish school system and Polish university, the development of Polish culture and therefore also Polish sports was much less restricted.Reference Mick⁹ Galicia, particularly its largest cities Krakow and Lwow, thus became the cradle of the majority of Polish sports organizations and associations and the centre of a flourishing sports culture.

The different political conditions had an important impact on the extent and manner of sports diffusion in the three parts of partitioned Poland. These conditions not only affected the opportunities and limitations of sports development, but also led to the introduction of different sports models in Poland and to integration in different transnational sports networks. The inter-imperial transfer within the German, the Russian and the Habsburg empires was of great importance for the early development of modern sports in Poland.Reference Wendland¹⁰ With the resurrection of an independent Polish state, which came at the end of the First World War, those different models and networks had to be integrated into a new national sports culture. But the differences did not vanish in the interwar years. Despite the link between sports and the concept of nation, there was no straightforward national concept of sport.

The example of Polish football serves to illustrate this development. Due to the political circumstances at the end of the nineteenth century, Polish football initially developed in Habsburg-ruled Galicia.Reference Hałys¹¹ The first documented football matches were played in Krakow and the first football clubs were founded in Lwow in 1903 and 1904, followed by clubs in Krakow in 1906.Reference Lenz¹² The football clubs were soon integrated into the sport structures and networks of the Habsburg Empire and were thus connected to Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Wisła and Cracovia for example, the two main clubs in the city of Krakow, officially registered as associations in 1910 and asked to have their internal regulations approved by the Austrian administration. In the same year, both clubs became members of the Austrian Football Association (Österreichischer Fußball Verband, ÖFV).Reference Pierzchała¹³ The intention behind this step was to intensify the contact and exchange with clubs not only from other parts of the Habsburg Empire but also beyond. And indeed, Cracovia in particular played an increasing number of matches in 1910 against Austrian, Hungarian and Czech teams, for example the so-called Cricketers from Vienna. Football in Vienna was used as an important point of reference and served as a yardstick to evaluate the performance of local and visiting teams.¹⁴

Some of the early football pioneers in Krakow had strong links with Vienna and used them to strengthen the sport's development. One of the most influential figures was Stanisław Kopernicki, editor of the daily newspaper Czas. From 1909 he served as the first vice president of the football club Cracovia and from 1911–13 as the club's president. He initiated some important reforms within the club, for example, hiring the first paid foreign trainer, the Czech František Kożeluh, in 1911. The latter introduced a new style of play in Krakow, based on low, short passes between players, which originated in Scotland and was the dominant style of play in Vienna. Oriented towards the Viennese model, it became known in Poland as the ‘Krakow style’,Reference Mielech¹⁵ and is one of the most conspicuous examples of the transfer of sports culture within the Habsburg Empire. Intensified contacts between clubs and the transfers of players, trainers, referees, etc, led to close connections and integration in the football culture of the Empire.

But national aspirations had not been completely marginalized. The development of a Polish football association is evidence of the football pioneers’ struggle to negotiate between national interests, sports, and even economic interests.

Just shortly after joining, Wisła Krakow left the ÖFV again in November 1910. Following the Czech model, and supported by their colleagues from Prague who had established an independent Czech football association in 1901, the Wisła officials founded an independent Polish football association (Polski Związek Towarzystw Sportowych Piłki Nożnej or Związek Footballistów Polski, ZFP) in May 1911, which aimed to represent all parts of partitioned Poland. Only 11 mostly small and insignificant clubs from Galicia followed their invitation to join. Furthermore, neither the Czech nor the Polish Football Association was able to become a member of FIFA because of an Austrian veto, and both were thus banned from competing with clubs from FIFA member associations. In the case of Wisła, this meant that even their local rival Cracovia, as a member of the ÖFV, was not allowed to arrange matches with them. There then followed attempts to establish an international association (UIAFA) as an alternative to FIFA, but these attempts were unsuccessful in the long run, as was the attempt to sustain an independent Polish football association. After only two months, the ZFP dissolved and Wisła applied once again for membership in the ÖFV.Reference Pierzchała¹³ Obviously, integration within an internationally recognized network seemed to have gained priority over national aspirations. It can be assumed that economic interests played an important part in this decision. At that time, football had already become a profitable business for many of those involved: international matches started to attract large crowds of spectators, particularly in Poland, while international contacts were an important precondition for the clubs’ successful development. As a response to the foundation of the ZFP, Stanisław Kopernicki and other Cracovia officials established a Polish Football Association by the end of 1911 within the Austrian Association (Związek Polski Piłki Nożnej, ZPPN). The ZPPN had very limited autonomy and was largely dependent on the ÖFV. Kopernicki himself became the first president of the ZPPN before being elected vice president of the ÖFV and later even a FIFA delegate.

The early development of football in Habsburg-ruled Galicia is one of several examples of how the inter-imperial transfer influenced the diffusion of sports in the Polish territories. Similar developments took place in the other parts of partitioned Poland. For instance, in the Russian territories the early stages of football was much more directly influenced by England and English migrants, just as it was in the whole of the Russian Empire. Here too, Polish football and clubs were integrated into the sports structures of the ruling power. An illustration of this is the selection of players from Lodz who went to Moscow to take part in the final round of the Russian competition in 1913.Reference Grüne¹⁶ Even though they were from the Polish territories of the Russian Empire, at least some of them were ethnically Germans. Germans constituted a huge minority in the multi-national industrial town of Lodz, and Germans were known to be the most successful footballers among the other Russian, Polish and Jewish players.Reference Bogusz¹⁷

After the First World War and the resurrection of an independent Polish state, the three different sports cultures had to integrate to become a national union. Once again the development of institutions and organizations for the whole of Poland originated in Galicia, especially Krakow and Lwow. Even before the war was over, preparations for the foundation of a Polish football association in an independent Poland were already underway under the leadership of Józef Lustgarten and Jan Weyssenhoff from Krakow.Reference Bieniarzówna¹⁸ The first president of the new Polish Football Association (Polski Związek Piłki Nożnej, PZPN), established in 1919, was Etnard Cetnarowski, president of the football club Cracovia from Krakow, where the head office of the association was first set up. Krakow and Lwow were very much to dominate Polish football, especially in the beginning of the interwar years.

Even after independent Polish institutions were established, the old networks still persisted. It was not by chance that the Polish national team's first international match was played against Hungary and that the most frequent football contacts in the early interwar period – at national as well as club level – were with Czechoslovakia, Hungary or Yugoslavia. There was also a lively exchange of players, trainers and other experts, such as the Hungarian Imre Poszony who became coach of Cracovia. Polish football in Galicia remained strongly connected with and oriented towards Vienna, Budapest and Prague. The coverage of Polish sports magazines, such as the Przegląd Sportowy, illustrates the strong focus on football in the successor states of the Habsburg Empire.

Even if sports were used as a means of national representation and identification for the young Polish nation, the importance of transnational networks dating back to partition times should not be underestimated. Famously, the imprint of the Habsburg Empire on football in the successor states was most clearly felt in the concept of ‘Danubian Football’ – the style and system of play in Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, particularly in the interwar years.Reference Marschik and Sottopietra¹⁹ But through Galicia, Poland was at least partly integrated in this network, clearly showing that sports diffusion and sports culture were not necessarily bound to national borders and territories.

Beyond modernization

Sport is commonly perceived as an aspect of modern societies that is connected to and intertwined with other developments in economic, political, social and cultural modernization. From the end of the nineteenth century, governments and social elites started to promote sports as a modernizing force.

English sport has been perceived as modern because it accompanied the predominant position of Great Britain in industry and commerce in the second half of the nineteenth century. The triumph of football across the world serves as a prominent example. The agents of industrial modernization were simultaneously ambassadors for football: entrepreneurs, merchants, employees of international banks, sailors, students and teachers disseminated the knowledge and practice of football around the globe. Moreover, the acceptance of football was highest among members of the urban educated elites. Engaging in modern sports was linked to self-perception and self-representation as a modern cosmopolitan individual.Reference Hüser²⁰

At first glance, Poland seems to fit this picture of football and the zeal of modernization. The first years of the so-called Second Polish Republic were characterized by a modernizing enthusiasm, and the nationally-oriented social elites in particular harboured great expectations of growth and development. Sports in Poland, especially in international competitions such as the Olympic Games, served as a yardstick in the process of modernizing the country and were used to measure the gap in relation to developed nations, not only in respect of sports but also in terms of civilization in general. Integration in European sports became synonymous with integration within wider European civilization: ‘Europe calls for us to be – as any other country – integrated into the family of civilized and free nations.’²¹

This expressed need for modernization and civilization derived from the perception that Poland was lagging behind and lacked modern development in comparison to other nations in Western and Central Europe. This assumed ‘relative backwardness’ reflected a Western perspective on the East that was based on Western patterns and ideas of modernization.Reference Girginov and Collins²²

Sport became part of a programme to modernize the country. But – importantly – the development of sport in Poland did not follow simple patterns of modernization. It cannot be seen merely as an aspect, by-product or reflection of modern economic or social development, but was, rather, a sphere in its own right, generating its own dynamics, and producing its own images and concepts of modernity. Polish football did not evolve primarily in the industrialized urban centres of Poland, such as Warsaw or Lodz, or even in the mining district of Upper Silesia. Instead, as we have seen, at least until the interwar years, its key base was in the less industrialized Galicia, in Krakow or Lwow. We must ask ourselves, therefore, why the modern English sport of football developed so successfully in supposedly non-modern Galicia?

The diffusion of football in Eastern Europe took multiple and twisted routes. Some of the disseminators were migrants or members of transnational communities such as the Jews living in the Polish lands. Among Eastern European Jews, the German Jews, often called ‘Berliner’, were perceived as the modernizers par excellence in all branches of religious, social or cultural life. The leadership of German Jews was recognized in the fields of learning, politics and in sports, and German was the lingua franca of the secularly educated East European Jews in the nineteenth century. One of the institutions transferring physical culture from Central to Eastern Europe was the German gymnastics movement (‘Turnbewegung’). For the Jews in Eastern Europe the German Jewish gymnastic movement played a similar role. But the ‘Turner’ decidedly did not bring ‘modern sports’ to Eastern Europe, preferring German Turnen instead. From the perspective of the Turnbewegung, modern sports were hardly perceived as harbingers of a new and better world. Football in particular was held to be brutal, ugly and dangerous – the pamphlet ‘Fusslümmelei’ by German gymnast (Turner) Karl Planck published in 1898 famously painted a picture of improvised playing fields, corrupt referees, and violent spectators rather than the educated gentlemen.Reference Planck²³

The German Jewish gymnastics club (Jüdischer Turnverein) Bar Kochba Berlin was founded in the same year that Planck so publicly criticized football. Even though the Jewish gymnastic movement was geared to the German cultural concept of Turnen, politically it was oriented towards Jewish nationalism and therefore reached out to the East European Jews as members of the Jewish nation. Gymnastics was perceived as an instrument for bodily enhancing the diaspora Jews and making them fit for building a nation state. Whilst the Jewish Turnerschaft was not officially Zionist, all of Bar Kochba's founders were Zionist activists.Reference Doron and Shmuel²⁴ Zionist ideology can be found in all publications of the Turnerschaft. Zionism is also represented by their colours (blue and white). Moreover, club names (Makkabi, Bar Kochba and Ha Koach) constitute ample evidence of their Zionist beliefs.Reference Reuveni²⁵ From that time on, German Jewish gymnasts led the gymnastics movement in Central and Eastern Europe on an institutional level. Since Turnen was perceived to be culturally German, the German Turnerschaft addressed gymnasts in an ‘all-German’ sense. Accordingly, the Jewish Turnbewegung did not only turn to the Jews in the German Reich, but to ‘all Jews of German tongue’.Reference Hilbrenner²⁶ From a European perspective, only Jews of the Russian Empire and Western Europe were excluded from the organizations of the Jüdische Turnerschaft.Reference Hilbrenner²⁶

The Jewish Turner opposed modern sports as much as their non-Jewish counterparts. First of all, such sports were believed to be dangerous and harmful to the body and its functions. According to the Jüdische Turnzeitung in 1913 and 1914, one of the many diseases modern sport was likely to lead to was the abnormal enhancement of the lungs and heart muscle. Football was singled out for particular criticism because it exercised the feet rather than the body.Reference Eisen²⁷

But more importantly from the perspective of the Turnerschaft, sport represented bourgeois capitalism and the shortcomings of modernity. Turnen was supposed to be the sport of the masses, of the whole Jewish community. With the help of Turnen, the individual Jew would merge into the Jewish nation. Sport, on the other hand, with its emphasis on effort and accomplishment, symbolized the principle of individualism. From the viewpoint of Jewish nationalists, individualism was to be defeated. Sportsmen were perceived to be rich and assimilated Western Jews, who had already renounced their belonging to the Jewish people. As such, they were seen as a threat to the Zionist cause. Turnen, by contrast, was perfectly suited to it, improving, it was argued, the moral and hygienic standard of the Eastern European Jewish masses, the basis of the future Jewish nation.Reference Eisen²⁷

From the perspective of the Turnerschaft, sport was perceived to be modern, with Turnen deemed more appropriate for the backward Jewish masses. This perspective reflects a modernist belief, as this statement in the Jüdische Turnzeitung of 1909 shows:

However, contrary to this modernist belief, it was thanks to the seemingly ‘backward’ Eastern European Jews that modern sports were introduced to the ranks of the Jüdische Turnbewegung. Opposed to the ideology of the German Zionists who believed Turnen to be ideal for the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, Eastern European Jews perceived sport to be much more satisfactory for their needs. Sport, and football in particular, was very well suited to the small and impecunious clubs of Eastern Europe, as the football amateur and pioneer Georg Eisen noted in the Jüdische Turnzeitung as early as 1911:

In 1913, the Jüdische Turnzeitung was re-launched as Jüdische Turn- und Sportzeitung, giving sport and Turnen equal importance. In the same year, the traditional mass gymnastics event (Schauturnen) on the occasion of the Eleventh Zionist Congress was replaced by a tournament devoted to both forms of body culture.

And by 1914 it was explicitly stated that sport suited the circumstances prevailing in Eastern Europe much better than Turnen:

It was not, therefore, the modernism of Eastern Europe but precisely its backwardness that favoured the spread of the modern English sport of football. Moreover, the sporting environment in Galicia encouraged Jewish Zionist football amateurs. Despite German Jewish cultural leadership, in the field of sport it was East European Jewish athletes who took the lead in introducing football to the Zionist gymnastic movement.

In 1911, the Jüdische Turnzeitung reported from Galicia:

Thus, while German Jewish gymnasts were still highly critical of football, in Krakow there were already other football clubs for Jews with a national orientation.Reference Hilbrenner²⁶

Multiple identities

While the Jüdische Turnzeitung was reporting on the Zionist (national Jewish middle class) football club ‘Bar Kochba’ in Krakow in 1911, there were at least four other football clubs for Jewish athletes to join: Jugend (Zydowskie Klub Sportowe Jugend, Jewish Sports Club Youth), Jutrzenka (Zydowskie towarzystwo sportowe Jutrzenka, Jewish Sports Club Jutrzenka), Diana from the Krakow district of Podgorze, and the best-known and most successful of all, Makkabi.Reference Hilbrenner²⁶ But football was not only restricted to the Krakow metropolis, the Jüdische Turnzeitung reporting also on the Jewish football club Samson in Tarnów. Nevertheless, there were clear differences between the clubs. Samson, for instance, was open to non-Jews, while Bar Kochba was evidently restricted to Jews only, and it is clear that the Zionist Jewish gymnasts were indignant about the fact the former had goyim (gentiles) in its ranks.Reference Hilbrenner²⁶ This report clearly illustrates the differences between different clubs. There was a further important difference between the clubs Makkabi and Jutrzenka. Makkabi was a Jewish national club and part of the Jüdische Turnerschaft, and can therefore be considered a middle-class establishment, while the Jutrzenka was socialist and therefore politically opposed to the bourgeois Zionist clubs. Even though Jutrzenka was described as ‘extremely assimilationist’Reference Krakau³¹ it was nevertheless to a certain extent also Jewish nationalist, because non-Jewish socialists had their own sports clubs that were also open to Jews. Another possibility for middle-class Jews with command of Polish and loyalty to the Polish cause was to get involved with a Polish club. One of the most important Krakow football clubs, Cracovia, was perceived to be a Jewish club (especially by anti-Semites) until well into the interwar period, even though it was definitely Polish and had a number of assimilated Jews among players and functionaries.Reference Jürgs³²

The rich choice of football clubs in Jewish nationalist circles in Krakow is testimony to the diversity of the landscape of sports institutions in Poland.Reference Jacobs³³ Sports clubs formed along and across almost every social, cultural and political divide.Reference Rokicki³⁴ Jewish society in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe in the interwar period was socially and culturally segmented, diverse, and transnational per se. The huge number of sports clubs sheds light on the many possible loyalties and identity options open to Polish Jews.Reference Hałys^7, Reference Blecking³⁵

The majority of Jews were religious (Chassidim or Orthodox Jews), and most of them opposed sport. When it comes to sport, therefore, we have to focus on the smaller number of secular Jews. But these did not fall into a homogeneous group. They can be classified as nationalist Jews on the one hand and assimilated Jews on the other, even though this rather simplistic division leaves a lot of open questions. Nationalist Jews could be of socialist, communist, liberal, Zionist or Diaspora nationalist orientation, speaking in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Russian or Polish. Cooperation was possible between some groups but not all.Reference Mendelsohn³⁶

Of particular importance for the development of sport was the Yiddish workers movement, politically represented by the Algemainer jidisher arbeter-bund fun Rusland, Pojln un Lite, known as the ‘Bund’. Its sports section was called morgenshtern.Reference Jacobs³⁷ In 1937, the Warsaw division of morgenshtern had 1500 members and was thus the largest local sports organization in the whole of Poland (outstripping even the other non-Jewish and socialist clubs).Reference Jacobs³⁸ The Jewish socialists opposed football as bourgeois, commercialized and individualistic. Interestingly, the same objections were also raised by the bourgeois German Jewish gymnasts against modern sports, including football. Nevertheless, football was very popular among young Jews, which meant that even the morgenshtern could not totally ignore its existence, and they too set up a football division.

The Zionist socialists of the Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion), who preferred Hebrew to Yiddish, also had their own sports organizations. They were politically divided between right and left. The leftwing Poalei Zion had its own sports section called Gwiazda (Star), while the rightwing Poalei Zion's athletes trained in Hapoel (The Worker). Both wings of the Zionist socialists had strong football divisions compared with the morgenshtern.Reference Jacobs³⁹

Non-socialist Zionists were active in the gymnastics movement (Turnerbewegung) and formed the Makkabi, Bar Kochba and Hakoach clubs, as noted above.Reference Reuveni²⁵

Assimilated Jews could identify with or join Polish or German (and on rare occasions also Ukrainian) sport clubs. In the Russian territories they may have favoured Russian high culture and could join a suitable club. In the Baltic region, e.g. Vilnius, they could join a Russian, Polish, Lithuanian or Jewish club. At the local level, Jewish players could always be found in non-Jewish local teams. The attendance of Jews in non-Jewish clubs is not particularly evident from sports history sources, but most biographical studies of Jewish athletes refer to at least short-term participation in non-Jewish clubs.Reference Postal, Silver and Silver⁴⁰ The engagement of a Jew in a non-Jewish club might have been due either to outstanding athletic talent or economic factors. Others became affiliated with clubs because they were located in the neighbourhood or because they were attached to schools or factories. Thus, membership in a sports club with a specific national or cultural identity would also be based on considerations of urban topography.Reference Emeliantseva⁴¹ Furthermore, as the example of the Lodz Germans in the Russian football tournaments in Moscow shows, this range of identity options was not specifically Jewish.Reference Bogusz¹⁷

Thus, the existence of many Jewish football clubs in interwar Poland is testimony to the variety of identity options open to the citizens of the Second Polish Republic. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the choices involved were of ephemeral character; membership in a sports club was not necessarily a life-long commitment. The frequent changes of sports clubs underline the situational identities of the modern individual and his multifaceted loyalties and belongings.