To the ACE Zeitgeist German boozer on Black Prince Road! …on Sunday lunchtime for an anarcho sausage fest.

Which isn’t quite as saucy as it might suggest.

Throw in some football, add in a literary angle, plus some rather wheaty Germanic beer and AHA!

Soon you have the backdrop for the booklaunch of Pirates, Punks and Politics, Nick Davidson’s appraisal of FC St Pauli.

Fußball-Club St. Pauli von 1910 e.V. - or FC St Pauli as the Comrades commonly call them - are a Hamburg based football team playing in the second tier of the Bundesliga.

So why all the interest in a second division team some 400 miles away? You don’t see Watford generating such passion across the water.

The irresistible rise of St Pauli fandom gives the Pirates, Punks and Politics backdrop for Davidson’s book. Sometime during the mid ’80s the club organically became the chosen team for anyone with a left-leaning persuasion.

Commies, anarchos, weirdoes - sometimes all three came out to play at the Millerntor-Stadion, relocated back in the traditional St Pauli territory of the Reeperbhan:

“An eclectic mix of anarchists, left-wingers, punks and people who just like to party, they welcome outsiders and, however serious their political views, they know how to have fun; win or lose, they’re on the booze, with an occasional toke thrown in.”

Which isn’t too far off the #ForFutureFootball scale that we are currently celebrating back down in SE22.

I walked into Zeigeist on Sunday lunchtime just as the home team of FSV Frankfurt took the lead on the big screen showing the live 2.Bundesliga game.

Parallels were once again drawn with the pink ‘n’ blue tradition of arriving fashionably late at Champion Hill, but not late enough to see the opposition take the lead.

Whoops.

Around fifty or so St Pauli fans had gathered in a backstreet Kennington boozer, to watch the game, buy the book and drink some booze.

I was welcomed by a couple of blokes completely unknown to me, and with the suggestion that I could order some incredibly strong German beer and they would pick up the tab.

I settled for an orange juice and took up a seat towards the back of the boozer.

Men and women in black filled the front room. This is an overtly political fan culture with the emphasis on fun (which just happens to have a political twist).

Books changed hands using the capitalist currency of hard cash. We’d pay in love and confrontation if we could, Comrades.

Much like 24 hours earlier down at the Dulwich, the result went the wrong way for the team espousing peace, bread work and freedom.

But once again:

WE HAVE ALREADY WON THE MORAL VICTORY.

Taking on two anarcho-syndicalist teams is perhaps too much. Imagine the exitential issues should Dulwich Hamlet somehow ever make it to the Europa League and came up against their Germanic Comrades.

But the book is a bloody ACE read, well researched and full of passion for the growing #ForFutureFootball movement.

Soul Taxi to Hamburg.