The only reason Union have overtaken Hertha in membership (if correct, there`s a debate if these numbers are accurate, apparently Hertha is already past 38k) is because they have a way smaller stadium. There`s literally no incentive to become a Hertha member for fans right now while for Union fans its a way to get tickets.
While Union is definitely more likeable and plenty of Hertha`s communication in recent times has been a bit HSVesque there are definitely a lot of misconceptions about the club coming from arrogant stances of (as mostly unsurprisingly on this forum) Dortmund and Bayern fans. Hertha had at no point favorable foundations for being a strong club.
The city is forcing them to rent a massive football-unfriendly stadium and does not allow them to plan to build one (which they want) because they need the rent income. Unlike other clubs, the city and region never had economic strength like the Western regions had at the early years of the Bundesliga or like the South has in the last 50 years. Berlin is still suffering from the economic consequences of the cold war when barely any big company wanted to settle in West Berlin given it was cut off from any suitable economic connections and infrastructure. And with the German unification they just got the (frankly) even more economically useless Eastern part. So the whole environment for Hertha as a club has never been favorable. Don`t get me wrong, the city is brilliant but you don`t get much money from all these non-profitable political organizations. For all the talk about how Bayern has always done so greatly as a club, Hertha never ever had the opportunities to build these ties with Audi, Adidas or Allianz.
People need to realize what an economical exception Berlin as a capital is compared to all the other major European cities is. It`s the only capital that has a GDP lower than the countries average. Still, awesome city.
Great post, and describes the situation aptly. Berlin is just simply a poor city, compared to the West German big cities, especially München and Hamburg.
To add to all the structural, fundamentally historic reasons for it, which the post describes, a large shot of defrauding of public money came splashed on top with the real estate scandal of the late 90s, which added massive debt to the city's already precarious financial situation (the then city government made deals with real estate investors to
guarantee enormous profits on fonds based on the renovation and renting of East Berlin's 'Plattenbauten' tenement blocks, profits that never materialized which led to the city, i.e. the people of Berlin, being indebted to those investors to the tune of double-digit billions).
I remember massive cutbacks to the universities' budgets, for example, which we protested back then, and closing of public swimming pools, cut backs in the city administration leading to legendary waiting times at the city offices, etc.
Then during the 2000s, former mayor Wowi and the city's PR department even turned it into a slogan, to be put on billboards and commercials - "Arm, aber sexy" ("poor, but sexy"), which to be fair sounds like a great condition to be in if you're planning on working in prostitution.
All those poor but sexy people of the 00s (I'm just going to include myself here..), are now 15 years older, still rather poor but sexy no longer.
Bayern are in their hegemonial financial position in Germany because the namesake state and the city they're from are incomparably richer, and because our board has over decades managed to develop a quasi-monopolist position on commercial/sponsoring relations with the biggest German firms and companies, many of whom are situated in Bavaria (and the biggest of which are also shareholders, Allianz, Adidas, Audi). And also a similar position within the media environment.
You guys wonder why Rummenigge, Hoeneß etc talk freely and uninhibitedly about any stuff that comes to their mind, in front of microphones and cameras, it's because it's their world, their habitat, it's where they are safe and privileged. They are cozy with the Bavarian government, German corporations, TV stations and media outlets and those are cozy with Bayern.
Now make no mistake, BVB and HSV have had potential to be in a very similar position, but they didn't have the consistency in club management (and maybe not the same safety net of a powerful local economic environment). BVB after all was the first German club to become listed at the stock market, and broke German wage and transfer records in the early 2000s.
In that time, Hertha was aspiring to be a CL club too, what with the big money transfers of Marcelino and Alex Alves. They messed it up, but they didn't have much room to fail - the economic environment parameters are just so much worse, along with the bad karma and cold vastness of the Olympiastadion.
It's a curious and tragicomic mix, like when I read of a sugardaddy investor trying to establish a 'big city club', yet then I walk past the 'TEDi' dime store in a run-down, half-deserted mini strip mall, under a railway bridge, next to an cheap Asia takeaway, a 'KiK' trash clothing discounter and a closed-down supermarket, right in the middle of the city but still in the no man's land of the former separation belt, and I remember that this dime store chain is Hertha's shirt sponsor.