Udo Lindenberg comes from Gronau, a small town near the Dutch border. His hometown is so proud of its most famous son that it dedicated both a public square and a larger-than-life statue to him. At its unveiling in 2015, Lindenberg himself described the monument as the “Statue of Liberty of Gronau.” Years later, the statue collapsed and had to be restored, but this did little to diminish its symbolic value. Leaving the countryside behind Lindenberg always had a strong urge to leave his rural surroundings behind. He grew up with three siblings in modest conditions; his father drank heavily, and the family home was often described as emotionally distant. As a child, Lindenberg would drum on metal boxes in the backyard, spend time with friends and imagine a life beyond Gronau. He later summed up that feeling in the line: “The best road in our town is the one leading...

The interwar Weimar Republic period is often referred to as a “Golden Age” of culture and creativity in Germany. It was a time when groundbreaking movements, from Bauhaus architecture and experimental cinema to avant-garde art and theater, flourished against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and extreme political polarization. In cities such as Berlin, where speakeasies, cabarets and hedonistic nightlife were the norm, a radical new genre of music became immensely popular. Jazz, which emerged from African American communities in the Deep South, was first brought to Germany by pioneering artists from the US, UK and France after World War I. Josephine Baker, the US-born dancer, actress and jazz artist who found fame in 1920s Paris, became a huge star in Germany after her sensational debut as the “Black Venus” in Berlin in 1926. By the 1930s, records by jazz icons such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were being played all over...

Where is Elversberg? Elversberg is a small town northeast of Saarbrücken in the small state of Saarland, in southwestern Germany. As part of Spiesen-Elversberg, the town has a population of around 13,000 but Elversberg alone has just 7,000 people living in it. There is no train station and just three bakeries.  What is Elversberg’s back story? The club was formed in 1907, although folded during World War I before reforming in 1918. In 2013, the club reached the third division alongside RB Leipzig, but they were promptly relegated. After two playoff defeats in 2016 and 2017, the club finally returned to the third division in 2022 and slowly began to gain a greater reputation. The club’s surge coincided with the appointment of Nils-Ole Book in 2017 and head coach Horst Steffen, a former Bundesliga player, a year later. Book first joined as a scout before becoming sporting director, where he played...