Roses for Kay: Another football is possible, remembering Kay Bernstein

Words: Damiano Benzoni

Images: Damiano Benzoni

A muted emotion, like footsteps on snow. Sombre, intimate.

People making their way to the stadium. Many of them clutching roses in their hands.

What is the right way to mourn a loss?

For sure this thought occupied the minds of the Hertha Berlin club and their Ostkurve in the days leading up to their 2. Bundesliga home game against Fortuna Düsseldorf.

Earlier in the week came the news of the passing of the club president, Kay Bernstein, aged 43. The man whose presidential election win in June 2022 was dubbed “nothing less than a coup” by Kicker magazine.

©Damiano Benzoni/ Terrace Edition. Remembering Kay Bernstein. Hertha BSC.

Because Bernstein wasn’t your usual president: he had come from the Ostkurve, where he was the chant leader and founder of the Harlekins group. And he was steering Hertha through difficult waters with what he called a “Berliner way” in his mind.

He had managed, more than anything, to get some affection back for a club whose past few years had seemingly become detached from some of the fan base. Even if the club was relegated from the Bundesliga last May and even if they don’t look in course to climbing back up again this year, the atmosphere at the Olympiastadion has definitely switched gears.

So how do you mourn all this?

Hertha chose to do so in a dignified way. To avoid the pomp, the pyro, the chants, the choreos.

The Kurve was a wall of black. Their leaders asked to refrain from singing. They only chanted the club’s anthem, “Nur nach Hause”, the music fading away soon and leaving space just for the voices of the fans.

The speaker broke up in tears in his elegy before the minute of silence, with the away Fortuna Düsseldorf fans honouring Bernstein with a banner saying “Another football is possible”.

A single flare burned at the centre of the Ostkurve.

Then the match kicked off. It was unreal, the voices from the pitch discernable as if it was a lower league game, albeit with an attendance of almost 45 thousands, the chanting of the Fortuna fans muffled by the large distances of the Olympiastadion and sounding as if they were put on far away speakers.

It felt right.

It was intimate, dignified, sober and respectful. It was heartfelt and sincere. It stripped away everything to express the sense of shock and loss and heartbreak.

It was delicate. Like the act of lighting a candle and the resting of a rose on the ground.