2023-04-28 11:27:00
Karli Marx has long had a cult status far beyond the German city of Chemnitz, where he appeared and “lives”. This is a huge, 2 meters 20 cm tall, and extremely muscular character, with a bushy black beard and lush gray hair. Like two drops of water similar to Karl Marx. This striking resemblance does not detract from even the jersey number 99, in which Carly goes out to warm up the fans before the start of the games.
But why Karl Marx, what does the theoretician of communism have to do with basketball? Absolutely none. And Chemnitz himself did not play any role in Marx’s life, he had never even been to Chemnitz! Just in the era of the GDR, in honor of the author of Capital, they decided to name the whole city, and the choice fell on Chemnitz. It was renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt. The former name was returned after the reunification of Germany, but associations with the founder of the communist ideology remained in the city. To this day, in the center there is a monument to Karl Marx – a bronze bust seven meters high and weighing about 40 tons.
How Karl Max became the mascot of athletes
The unusual idea to use the image of Karl Marx as a mascot came from the Chemnitz 99 basketball club seven years ago. “Nobody wanted a jumping nine,” club spokesman Matthias Pattloch said in an interview, looking at the club’s name. And when one day the fans performed a comic dance called “Fear the real beard!”, The decision was made – the quickly became a cult Karli Marx was born. His costume was made in the Netherlands, and since then this original mascot has become an integral part of the Chemnitz basketball team.
Until now, Carly brings good luck and causes mostly positive emotions in fans and players. With this talisman, the club from Chemnitz got into the Bundesliga in 2020 and even participated in the qualifying matches for the Champions League for the first time. And photos of the lucky bearded man are glorifying German basketball players on social networks far beyond Germany – only one of the pictures published by a professor of literature from Liverpool on Twitter in November 2022 has already gained about 38 thousand likes.
Mascot expert Felix Schumacher is delighted with the bearded man doll, and he himself sometimes wears this costume with pleasure. “You can really stand out with him,” he told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. And the expert notes with satisfaction that the creators even made sure that the doll had only four fingers on its hand. Asked why this is important, Schumacher explained that there is an unwritten law for mascots: human character puppets must have four fingers, as they must remain an illusion. For the same reason, talismans are not allowed to talk.
Goat Hennes – the mascot of the Cologne footballers
In Germany, there is another sports mascot that even those who do not understand football at all know. This is Hennes. Goat Hennes – the mascot of the football club “Cologne” (1.FC Koln). His the peculiarity is that it is a real living being. The kid was presented to the players in 1950 by the director of the circus. According to legend, when the coach took him in his arms, the goat peeed on him. But it was taken as a sign of good luck, and the animal became the team’s official mascot. Moreover, coach Hennes Weisweiler agreed to give him his name as well. From that moment on, the goat was present at all the club’s home games.
Since then, more than one generation of Hennes has changed. In 1970, a story that made a lot of noise happened: Hennes II was found one morning lifeless in a paddock. Until now, there are rumors among fans that their mascot could have been poisoned by rivals. At the same time, his successor Hennes VIII “worked” as a talisman for 11 years, and in August 2019 he was solemnly sent “retired” for health reasons. The club’s current mascot is Hennes IX, which belongs to a breed of colored German noble goats and is especially similar to its predecessors from the 1950s.
The club’s players have always treated all the Hennes as members of the team: the goat was even taken for a ride on an open-top bus, and there were also cases when the animal was brought with them on a leash to the pub. What once started as a joke has long since become an integral part of the Cologne club. By the way, you can not only admire Hennes at games, advertising cups, T-shirts and the coat of arms – the goat became a TV star, starring in two films. And in In January 2020, fans of the English amateur club Caversham United also confirmed that the horned mascot is special not only for the fans of the Cologne football team: in the course of a vote, they chose Hennes as the coolest mascot in the world.
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