With the cross in our hearts

A proud anniversary: 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first Bayer 04 official fan club. The pioneers of the ‘First fan club 1976 Leverkusen’ still hold their love for the club dear, black and red passion knows no expiry date. Read on to discover the development of organised fan culture at Bayer 04 and where it is practised around the country and the world.

1976 had a lot to offer in terms of special moments from the big wide world of sport. ‘Gold Rosi’ Mittermaier enchanted an entire nation as double Olympic champion in downhill and slalom in Innsbruck, the Brit James Hunt is crowned Formula 1 world champion, Björn Borg wins the first of five consecutive titles at Wimbledon, Muhammad Ali defends the heavyweight boxing world championship against Ken Norton in New York and Franz Beckenbauer is voted European Footballer of the Year.

birth  of organised Fan culture under the cross

At the time, two young men were working their way through the light rows of spectators at Bayer 04 home matches in the Ulrich Haberland Stadium in tranquil Leverkusen, seeking supporters for the establishment of a fan club in a sign-up campaign. Gerd Wölwer and Karl-Heinz Groß are successful with their mission: On 25 November 1976, there is a huge crowd at the official founding meeting at the Bayer 04 clubhouse - the ‘First Fan Club 1976 Leverkusen’ is founded, with more than 120 members shortly afterwards. It was the birth of organised fan culture Under the Cross.

The fact the Werkself lost 1-0 at SC Wacker 04 Berlin in front of around 500 spectators just a few days before this momentous occasion in their second year in the second division says a lot about the exclusive circle of spectators in which the Bayer 04 team still operated at the time - even when playing on their own pitch: In that 1976/77 season, the average attendance at Leverkusen in the Bundesliga 2 North was 3,099. It was only after promotion to the Bundesliga in 1979 that regular five-figure attendances were recorded at Bismarckstraße, albeit with disappointing lows: On 13 November 1982, for example, only 5,000 fans watched the 1-0 win against FC Nürnberg.

However, the enthusiasm of the First fan club 1976 was in no way dampened by the limited interest of a larger audience, and some members even set up their own fan club offshoots. This is how the Black Wolves came into being in 1979, followed by the Heidgen fan club (all of which still exist today) and the Steppenwölfe. Andreas ‘Paffi’ Paffrath, long-time fan representative at Bayer 04, once compared the pioneers of that time to the ‘Rote Funken’, the oldest carnival group in Cologne: "All the others grew out of the First fan club 1976. And the subject of fans was promoted by the club from then on. There were regular meetings with the club management and players at the clubhouse and anyone could attend. But back then it was still a pretty small organisation."

However, it soon experienced phases of stable growth. "There was a real boom, especially after the UEFA Cup victory in 1988," says Paffrath. The number of people who organised themselves to live out their passion for football with the Cross on their chest exploded. The successes in the years that followed led to more and more fan clubs being formed in Poland, Switzerland and even Brazil. At the peak of its development almost 15 years ago, Bayer 04 had around 500 registered fan clubs. After the club abolished the fan club season ticket and carried out a comprehensive reform, 200 of them remained in 2016. "We had to weed out a few dead bodies," says Paffrath.

There are now more than 300 official Bayer 04 fan clubs. Around 60 per cent of the fan clubs are based in Leverkusen and the surrounding area, but the Black and Red flag also flys high far beyond the borders of the Rhineland.

Fan clubs In Leverkusen, germany and all over the world

The ‘Alpenpillen’ from Munich, for example, hold regular get-togethers in the far south and often travel to the Werkself matches, as does the ‘Fanclub Berlin-Schöneweide’ from Germany’s capital. But it is not just the major cities of Germany that are populated by Bayer 04 supporters: In Lower Saxony, the ‘Küstenlöwen’ and the ‘Ammerland Löwen’ roar, in Saxony it is the ‘Bayer-Sperken’, in Brandenburg the ‘Allesfahrer’, in Saxony-Anhalt the ‘Parti Darios’ and in Baden-Württemberg the fan club ‘Badisch LEV’, who remain loyal to the Werkself from far and wide in Germany. There are Werkself fan clubs around the world in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Great Britain, Russia, the USA, Tanzania, China and the Arab world.

Long, long ago were the days when fans of the Werkself could spontaneously decide to watch a game at home. Most recently, Bayer 04 sold a total of 21,400 season tickets, with more than 10,000 people now on the waiting list for a season ticket at the BayArena. The full contingent of away tickets has also been taken up several years now, with more than 70,000 people now members of the Bayer 04 members' clubs.

Numbers that could not have sprung from even the wildest imagination on 25 November 1976. And which Gerd Wölwer, Karl-Heinz Groß, Reinhard ‘Theo’ Theobald and their comrades-in-arms from the ‘First Fan Club 1976 Leverkusen’ nevertheless toasted that evening in the smoke-filled air of the Bayer 04 clubhouse. As exotic creatures with a Cross in their hearts - who would never have dreamed of being the pioneers of a mass movement 50 years later.