The famous skull (in German: Totenkopf) logo of FC St Pauli was not created in any marketing department or advertising agency – and it was ‘invented’ twice: The first time by a resident of the nearby Hafenstrasse squats called Doc Mabuse. Around 1986, he nailed a skull and crossbones flag from the ‘Hamburger Dom’ fair on the Heiligengeistfeld to a broomstick and took it to the Gegengerade (back straight, the east stand) of the Millerntor stadium. His idea soon found many imitators. However, ‘his’ skull was still wearing an eye patch.
A little later, but independently of this, Steph Braun found the perfect template for a new neighbourhood shirt in an old anatomy book: a skull. The owner of a screen printing company in Clemens-Schulz-Straße combined it with crossed bones, which were initially intended for an ‘anti-Batman shirt’.
The biggest customer was soon the St. Pauli Fanladen, an independent project not to be confused with a fan shop. It was founded by Fc St. Pauli supporters in 1990. More and more people associated Steph Braun’s neighbourhood skull with the club – partly because it reminded them of the skull flags they had seen in the stadium. At the end of the 1990s, FC St. Pauli finally adopted the trade mark Steph Braun had meanwhile registered to protect it from plagiarism. It now had a second logo.