Adrian Maleika
The 16-year-old glazier’s apprentice Adrain Maleika was a passionate football player and an active member of the SV Werder Bremen fanclub Die Treuen. On 16 October 1982 he and other fans came to Hamburg for the DFB cup match between his team and the HSV. Violence broke out at the Volkspark Stadium between several hundred HSV and Bremen fans, with stones, gas pistols, and flares being used as weapons. Adrian Melaika was badly wounded when a stone hit the back of his head, and he fell to the ground. Attackers continued to kick his unconscious body. He died the following day in hospital.
According to witnesses, members of the fanclub Die Löwen had thrown the stone that hit Melaika. In the 1980s Die Löwen were well-known for openly glorifying National Socialism and, along with other groups like the Savage Army and racist skinheads, responsible for many brutal attacks. In December 1983, two men and one woman from the fanclub were found guilty of taking part in the brawl, but the question of who killed Adrian Maleika remained unanswered. When the judged pronounced his verdict, he remarked that the reactions of the defendants and their friends in the courtroom were a frightful indication ‘that the death of Adrian Maleika would only be seen as a routine accident’ (Hamburger Abendblatt, 20 December 1983).
In December 1982, representatives and fan delegates from both football clubs met in Scheeßel, a town half-way between Hamburg and Bremen, for a symbolic ‘standstill agreement’, in order to prevent further clashes. As a result, many fan-projects arose with the goal of eliminating excessive violence and hooliganism. Nevertheless, a song that trivializes Adrian Maleika’s death can still be heard coming from the HSV fan blocks during games against Bremen.
From 1987 to 2003, Bremen fans organized Adrian Maleika Memorial Tournaments, in which fan-teams from all over Germany played. 30 years after Maleika’s death, on 17 October 2012, a memorial plaque was unveiled in the East Curve of the Weserstadion in Bremen. On the 40th anniversary of his death a plaque was also unveiled in the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg.
Roland Maleika often asks himself what his younger brother’s life would have been like:
‘Would he have had a wife and children, would we still be as close as we were as kids and teen-agers? […] He wanted to be a craft glazier, and dreamed of opening his own business after his apprenticeship and a few years of work experience. Adrian had a girlfriend, it was still a young, delicate relationship, just starting out.’
İbrahim Arslan/Jasper Kettner: Die Angehörigen, Berlin 2019, p. 83
