Football reporting emerged in Germany, as in Austria, in the 1890s. Sports journalists, along with sporting goods manufacturers and dealers, building and transport contractors, bookmakers and beverage producers, were among the groups of people who profited directly from modern sport. The first specialist journalists were mostly active footballers who tried to open up the market for this new kind of diversion in this way.

The very first sports magazine, however, appeared as early as October 1792. „The Sporting Magazine, or Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chase and every other Diversion interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprize, and Spirit“, however, was about the then most popular sports of the upper classes: Hunting and horse racing.^[1]Behringer, Wolfgang: Kulturgeschichte des Sports. From Ancient Olympia to the Present. Munich 2012. p. 236.

Here I introduce the two sports magazines Sport im Bild by Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles and Spiel und Sport by John Bloch.

Sport in Picture

Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles (1871-1956) was one of the first sports journalists in late 19th century Germany and, significantly, English. He grew up as the son of a wool merchant in the English colony of Wiesbaden and later studied chemistry in various places, specialising in photochemistry. He was also interested in modern sports and also consulted at least the weekly newspaper „Spiel und Sport“^[2]Cf. Spiel und Sport 3 (1893), 14.01.1893, p. 10: „[…] to one of our readers, Mr. Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles of Wiesbaden […].“. Since his youth, he had been aiming to publish his own sports newspaper. In Berlin he became acquainted with the newly developed multiplication process according to Meisenbach and Riffarth, which made the transfer of illustrations to woodcuts superfluous. He used this process and in 1895 founded the magazine Sport im Bild; one of the first magazines to be designed entirely with photographs. This was one of the reasons why the quarterly magazine, made of art paper, cost 6 DM. And to attract a diverse audience and interest in modern sport, it reported not only on sport but also on theatre, travel as well as gossip about the European aristocracy. The latter especially when the imperial family attended a sporting event as spectators. But despite this prominent publicity for modern sport, sales figures hardly increased. Pitcairn-Knowles angrily sold his magazine in 1904 and opened an international press agency for sports photos in Paris.

Sport im Bild was bought by the Berlin publisher August Scherl, who had published the illustrated magazine Die Woche since 1899 and also worked with the new photo printing process. He changed the title to Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Sport, Gesellschaft, Theater and took over Pitcairn-Knowles‘ trained staff; he made the successful track and field athlete Kurt Doerry editor-in-chief. Doerry is considered the founder of German (mass) sports journalism in the 1920s.^[3]Cf. Eisenberg, Christiane: „English Sports“ and German Citizens: a Social History 1800-1939. Paderborn 1999. pp. 156-158.

Play and Sport

The magazine Spiel und Sport was founded in 1891, a sports magazine initially published monthly, at the latest weekly in 1893, which became the club organ of the Berlin association „Deutsche Fußball- und Cricket Bund“ and subsequently the club organ of other regional sports associations. The magazine was published until the first years of the 20th century. In contrast to Sport im Bild, Spiel und Sport was a text-only newspaper. In fact, his magazine was more popular than Pitcairn-Knowle’s Sport im Bild because it summarised the numerous football reports and results. Also because he was always demanding these reports from the clubs and asking for the line-ups. Here he was probably a pioneer in sports reporting. And sports reporting was what interested readers. Possibly for this reason Pitcairn-Knowles soon published Sport im Wort. In 1901, Spiel im Sport was merged into Sport im Wort.

Instrumental in Spiel und Sport was John Bloch, of German origin but from Birmingham, who lived in Berlin at the end of the 19th century. In the early 1890s he was chairman of the English Football Club Berlin, 2nd chairman of the Berlin Cricket Club, chairman of the German Football and Cricket Association founded in 1891, managing director of the Association of German Football Players in 1890 and editor of Spiel und Sport from 1891 to 1900. However, he only held most of these offices for a few years, as he was repeatedly the target of anti-English and anti-Semitic resentment.
Bloch took over the newspaper, which had been founded shortly before under the name Deutsche Ballspiel-Zeitung, and in the summer of 1900 passed it on to his daughter Stella Bloch and another relative, Neville B. Bloch. However, both edited the magazine for only a few more months, then it was taken over by Sport im Wort.

Apparently, Spiel und Sport had an English readership that was not to be underestimated, as each magazine included the English Chat, where the most important stuff was also reproduced in English.

There were a number of other sports magazines, such as Spiel und Sport or Allgemeine Sportzeitung, but sports journalism, like the general enthusiasm for sports, took great leaps a few years later, namely after the First World War. In 1926, there were about 500 sports newspapers, but only a few of them reported objectively, but all the more luridly in order to achieve higher sales figures.^[4]Cf. Eggers, Erik: Die Anfänge des Fußballsports in Deutschland. On the Genesis of a Mass Phenomenon. In: Markwart Herzog (ed.): Fußball als Kulturphänomen. Art – Cult – Commerce (= … Continue reading

Photocredits

Bid extract of the front page of Sport im Bild of 14 May 1897, see http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=sib&date=1897&page=7&size=45 (last accessed 18.12.2017).