I was watching the USP video the other day and I saw several banners that said "Littemann Raus", and "bye bye Littemann". Can someone give me some background as to why fans were calling for his head?

The presence of the letter 'E' would indicate to me that this refers to someone other than Corny Littmann (without an 'E').
Other than that, I'm afraid I've no idea.

just because who ever is in charge they like to moan!

don't know enough about him to say if in his case they had a point or not tho.

aliceb wrote:

just because who ever is in charge they like to moan!

Well, there is that. The ultras and Littmann have never seen eye to eye, at least not for a long time. He was Hamburg's "Businessman of the Year 1999" or something, so he's obviously dodgy.

Then there was the situation a few years ago where several stadium bans were issued, to which the ultras objected (sorry, don't know the exact details) and Littmann refused to have them overturned, which was in his power to do. And the time when Chemnitz came to play, and some of their fans to cause trouble, which ended up with some St. Pauli fans getting arrested, etc., and Littmann backed the police. That didn't go down too well, either.

And there were probably a few other things.

Well, covering the whole Littmann-Story could easily become the longest post in the history of this board (even longer than that about Orwell ).

I'll try to make it short as I'm quite sleepy and need to go to bed:

He's not so much of a business man, but of an artist, who is a business man as well as he founded and still runs two privately owned theaters, a restaurant, a gay bar and together with partners the Spielbudenplatz (the place in the middle of the Reeperbahn). He doesn't do that alone but he has a business partner who seems to do most of the business stuff.

He has a rich history of being a gay rights activist, member of the Green Party (and ran for a seat in parliament for them), and artist (actor, cabaret). He even wrote a song that was later played by the legendary band Ton Steine Scherben/Rio Reiser. He is a St.Pauli support for decades as well, though not from the "active" supporters scene.

Even his harshest critics would not deny that he is the most successful president of the last decades. He played an important role in preventing a further downfall after relegation to the 3rd league, played a key role in keeping the club alive in the third league and started to build a new stadium - and not just some kind of stadium, but in a way that really fits to the club (size, rebuilding one stand after the other etc.).
The problem is that he is egocentric, does not accept other people's advice (except maybe for Markus Schulz) , is unable/unwilling to communicate properly with supporters, club members, club officials etc. and thus makes unnecessary mistakes and spoils big parts of his success.

Even if we just look at the economical side we must recognize that his success was more due to great luck than good planning. Without that great cup run which was only stopped by Bayern in the semi-final, St. Pauli would have faced bankruptcy at the end of 2005. The promotion in 2007 came unexpected and was a great achievement by Stanislawski and the team but not the president.

Stadium: It's great that a fitting stadium will finally be built. We don't know for sure how it's going to be financed and how this will limit the independence of the club. That contract with that Swiss investor allowing them to pull their money out immediately should Littmann step down as a president or should be voted out by the members of the club is just one example of things which should not happen.