Not too many years ago, if you visited the Olympic Stadium in Berlin (that place where Jesse Owens wrote his legend almost 90 years ago) on a Hertha match day, you could see a young man with a megaphone extolling the local fans. That man, Kay Bernstein (1980, Marienberg), who traveled throughout Germany in support of his Hertha, whether in the First or Second Division, is today the president of his life club.
“As a fan I was active, I organized myself at the national level and worked for our curve for eight years, I gave everything for Hertha,” the German recently commented. Bernstein, who began to be a fixture on the curve in his teens, ended up co-founding the ultra group ‘Harlekins’, famous in the Berlin underground scene.
Also, as the leader of an organization of this depth, he was expelled three times from the stadium due to clashes typical of radicals; in fact, in one of them, he was detained by the police after being accused of having encouraged the crowd to throw objects onto the field, a situation that ended with a club worker injured.
His present, however, differs from the murky past of an ultra. Successful businessman in the fields of communication and construction and family man, Bernstein is the image of change in a disillusioned club. In May this year, former president Werner Gegenbauer, after 14 years of questionable management despite the fact that the club’s main investor, Lars Windhorst, injected more than 350 million euros into the capital project, resigned from his position. Thus, the way was opened for the past ultra, which confirmed his superiority in the elections.
Bernstein won an absolute majority (1,670 votes out of a total of 3,016) and took to the podium in the Olympic offices wearing a club sweatshirt with a blue Hertha patch over his heart. In a scene more typical of an animation fund than an institutional act, while numerous members of the assembly dedicated the characteristic chant ‘Ha, ho, he, Hertha!’, the new leader promised to make a drastic change in the future of the club. “Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your responsibility. Our Hertha is in intensive care, but we can heal him from within. That only works together. Each one of you can help us to recover our blue and white soul. Thanks. And Ha, ho, he, Hertha! », he concluded.
Kay is not lying when she points out that Hertha is in intensive care. In the season that has just ended, the Blue and Whites were sixteenth in the Bundesliga, played the relegation playoff against another historic player in trouble, Hamburg, and stayed in the German top division by the minimum. In addition, since Union Berlin was first promoted to the Bundesliga in the 2019-20 season, the team from East Berlin rules in the capital. In the last two campaigns, the Alte Försterei have qualified for Europe (Conference in 2021 and Europa League in 2022), a ground that Hertha has not set foot on since 2017-18. In addition, in the last three derbies, those in white and blue have lost all three.
Former champions of Germany (two Leagues and two Cups), the Olympiastadion have a lot to build to regain dominance in their city. With veteran Stefan Jovetic as his flagship player, the current summer market is expected to be key for the Blue and Whites’ aspirations.
