How World Cup came to Germany

STUTTGART:

Not many people know that Titanic has often been regarded as instrumental in getting the World Cup to Germany. This has also been confirmed by former German coach Rudi Voller. Well what exactly is Titanic?

Titanic is a German satirical monthly magazine. It is based in Frankfurt and is probably Germany’s best-known satirical publication.

Titanic was founded in 1979 by a group, consisting mainly of former editors of Pardon, a satirical monthly, which they left after continuous, conflicts with its publisher.

The founding staff of Titanic consisted of writers and cartoonists who

were mostly based in Frankfurt and who were therefore often called “New Frankfurt School”, a term that half-jokingly refers to the Frankfurt School in philosophy.

The history of Titanic has seen a large number of scandals, and the number of lawsuits against Titanic is as astonishing as the amount of money that had to be paid after some of them. Until 2001, 40 lawsuits were set off. Politician Björn Engholm for example received 40,000 Deutsche Mark in compensation, which, in combination with 190,000 DM court costs, drove Titanic close to bankruptcy.

In the recent years, the magazine has repeatedly attracted attention, for example by taking the football World Cup to Germany by bribing a FIFA delegate. In 2000, Martin Sonneborn (Titanic’s former editor in chief) sent hoax faxes to a number of delegates of the FIFA World championship committee in Zurich urging them to support the German bid in return for a gift manipulating the decision of the FIFA, where the Football World Cup 2006 should be held.

Before, it was widely expected that the tournament would take place in South Africa, but New Zealand’s representative, Charles Dempsey, who was instructed to vote for South Africa by the Oceania Football Confederation, abstained from voting at the last minute. If he had voted for the Africans, the tally would have been 12:12, giving the decision to FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who had supported South Africa’s bid.

Dempsey was among eight members to receive the fax, the night before the vote, promising a cuc-koo clock, a beer mug, Black Forest, some saus-ages and ham in exchange for voting for Germany. Dempsey himself famously stated, “This final fax broke my neck.” He argued that pressure from all sides had become too much for him, and next day he abstained from voting which tilted the bala-nce in favour of Germany.

German tabloid Bild-Zeitung asked their readers to phone Titanic and express their outrage for damaging Germany’s reputation through bribery. Later, Titanic published an audio CD with recordings of those calls and all the documents and those recording are at display in an exhibition titled CARICATURA in Frankfurt’s Romerberg Square, which shows this remarkable chain of events and the story how the World Cup came to Germany.