The time of the “Wonder Elf”
When FC St. Pauli almost became German champions
Updated 12/28/2025 – 2:49 amReading time: 2 minutes
HSV was long considered Hamburg’s clear number one. Now St. Pauli has passed by for the first time since 1954. A look at history shows that it was often like this in the past.
It was long HSV sporty way ahead of that FC St Pauli. But in the 2023/24 season, the “Kiezkicker” finished ahead of their city rivals for the first time since 1954, and in 2024/25 the Totenkopf even played in a league higher than the diamond for the very first time.
By the mid-1950s, the race for number one in the city was already even: HSV and St. Pauli fought a close race for the championship in the Oberliga Nord year after year. In 1948 and 1949 both clubs even finished with the same points – a playoff had to be played in order to award the title in the north. HSV prevailed in these duels in both years, but St. Pauli still made it to the final round of the German championship.
HSV was knocked out in the quarter-finals against today’s TuS Koblenz. But St. Pauli made it to the semi-finals over SG Union Oberschöneweide (7-0) – the only all-German championship game between 1947 and 1991. There followed a bitter fight against 1. FC Nürnberg in Mannheim. The Franconians shocked the brown and whites with a double strike after half an hour. But FC St. Pauli got back into the game, Fritz Machate equalized after 82 minutes. It went into overtime. Only one more goal followed – 3-2 for Nuremberg, the eventual German champions.
In 1949, Kaiserslautern only stopped St. Pauli in the quarter-finals after extra time, and in 1950 it ended in the same round against Fürth. The HSV never got any further than the “Kiezkicker” – they marched through the competitions at absolute eye level. These were the years of the so-called “Wonder Elf” that Schlachter’s son Kurt Miller had built up in the years after the war. Even Helmut Schön, the 1974 world champion national coach, briefly wore the brown and white shirt during this time.
However, other St. Paulians were influential figures. Harald Stender, for example, who played 337 league games for St. Pauli in midfield, defender Hans Appel and coach Hans Sauerwein, who was even considered a candidate for the national coaching position. At the end of the “Wunderelf” names like Alfred Boller and Alfred Beck, who would be something like “goalgetter” today, were added.