East German football league system


East German football league system
Founded
1949
Disbanded
1991
Nation
East Germany
Bezirke
Schwerin
Rostock
Neubrandenburg
Magdeburg
Potsdam
Berlin
Halle
Frankfurt
Cottbus
Gera
Erfurt
Suhl
Dresden
Leipzig
Karl-Marx-Stadt
Last Champion 1990-91
Hansa Rostock

The football league system of the German Democratic Republic existed from 1949 until shortly after German reunification in 1991.

Structure

For most of its history, competitive GDR football was divided into three tiers. The Oberliga was founded in 1949, and served as GDR football's highest tier of competition throughout the country's existence.
The Liga was founded in 1950 as the GDR's second tier of competitive football. Between 1950 and 1954, Liga clubs were divided into geographical sub-divisions. In 1955, the Liga switched to a single division format, before reverting to geography-based sub-divisions in 1962.
Between 1952 and 1954, and from 1963 until 1990, the third tier of GDR competitive football consisted of several district leagues known as Bezirksliga. The boundaries of these Bezirksligen corresponded to each of the GDR's administrative divisions, with clubs assigned according to their location. In 1955, a single division known as the II. Liga was introduced, supplanting the various Bezirksligen as the GDR's third tier of competitive football and transforming the latter into fourth tier competitions. However, in 1963 the II. Liga was abolished, and the Bezirksligen were restored to third tier status.
In order to facilitate re-integration into a unified German league system, a one-off reorganisation of East German leagues was implemented for the 1990-91 season. This reorganisation saw the Bezirksligen once again relegated to fourth tier status, with the third tier consisted of four new divisions corresponding to the regions of Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thüringen.
Below the Bezirksliga level, several county competitions known as the Bezirksklasse, Kreisliga and Kreisklasse took place.

Timeline

Source:

Governance

Between 1949 and 1957, the East German Sports Committee was officially responsible for administering the country's various leagues via its Football Section. In addition to securing the GDR membership in football's international governing body FIFA, the SF was a co-founder of European football's foremost administrative body, UEFA. Both achievements would pave the way for the participation of East German clubs in international competition from the mid-1950s onwards.
From 1957, the East German Gymnastics and Sports Confederation assumed the DS's responsibilities over sport, later forming the East German Football Association in 1958 to replace the SF.

Political interventions

Despite the official power accorded to the SF and later the DFV, both bodies lacked total autonomy over major administrative decisions, which were often influenced by the political interventions of state and regional interests.

Club restructuring

In 1954, the SF forcibly merged or relocated several clubs in the Oberliga. Officially, the decision was aimed at concentrating the best players in certain locations, with the intention of improving the general quality of GDR football.
However, the move was derided by fans as serving the interests of powerful political interests. Dynamo Dresden, the Oberliga champions of 1952-53, was relocated to Berlin as BFC Dynamo upon the urging of football afficiando and Stasi leader Erich Mielke. Chemie Leipzig, the Oberliga champions of 1950-51, was also dismembered, with its best players and staff delegated to the new party-sanctioned clubs of Lokomotive Leipzig and Rotation Leipzig, and the rump Chemie Leipzig relegated to the Bezirksliga.
Relocations would continue to take place throughout the GDR's existence, one notable example being the removal of Vorwärts Berlin to Frankfurt upon the order of Mielke in 1971.

League calendar

In 1955, the SF switched its league competitions from the traditional autumn-to-spring season running between August and May, to a calendar-year season running from February to November. This decision was influenced by the desire of GDR political leaders to align the country's institutions with those of the Soviet Union, which employed the calendar-year system in order to avoid playing games in cold and snowy winter weather.
However, the decision made less practical sense in the more temperate GDR. Match attendances suffered during the traditional vacation months of July and August, and GDR clubs - often midway through their domestic seasons - found themselves at a physical disadvantage in UEFA competitions against fresh European sides coming off their summer breaks.
The DFV would revert to the old August-to-May system from the 1960-61 season onwards.

Club prioritisation

The DFV implemented two major reforms in 1965 and 1970 that favoured the GDR's larger clubs.
In 1965, select clubs were formally granted status as football clubs. The FCs were allowed to establish player development programmes and schools within their designated catchment areas. The move essentially granted them a monopoly over up-and-coming youth prospects, contributing to an ever-increasing gulf in quality between the FCs and ordinary factory clubs.
In 1970, the DFV presided over de facto professionalisation. Players in FCs were allowed to train full-time, and were granted access to material privileges such as interest-free loans, cars, or apartments. By contrast, BSG players were expected to complete their day-shifts, and continued to be paid solely for their day-jobs.

Transfers

Officially, player transfers for money did not exist in the GDR. However, the DFV could 'delegate' a player from one club to another upon the player's request.
Such delegations were frequently subject to political complexities. In 1981, Sachsenring Zwickau player Hans-Uwe Pilz requested a transfer to Dynamo Dresden. Despite the DFV's approval, resistance from Zwickau officials scuttled the move. In 1982, the DFV approved a second request by Pilz to move to Dresden, only to find that regional DTSB officials from Karl-Marx-Stadt had signed off on papers delegating Pilz to their city's own club: FC Karl-Marx-Stadt. The resulting fracas was only settled after intervention from national DTSB chief Manfred Ewald and Socialist Unity Party Central Committee member Rudolf Hellmann.
Such horsetrading between competing party, city, and club officials for players was commonplace. Although player income was officially restricted to what they earned from their day-jobs, officials offered a variety of under-the-table incentives to lure players away, ranging from apartments, cars, food, or laxer work regiments.

Clubs

Affiliations

Football clubs in the GDR could be classified into four categories:

''BSG''

Short for Betriebssportgemeinschaft, BSGs were sport clubs sponsored by state-owned enterprises. BSGs were the basis of sports in the GDR, and were the most numerous type of GDR football club. However, they received the least support from state authorities, and were often subject to arbitrary interventions.
Generally, players were enterprise employees. Due to the varying economic output of different industries, the BSG's varied greatly in financial wealth and sporting success, with Wismut and Chemie clubs proving particular successful. BSG's can be subdivided into the following:
Some industrial branches were particularly unsuccessful due to low funding. One example were the agricultural enterprises, which failed to have a club in the Oberliga or Liga after 1978, when Traktor Groß Lindow were relegated.
Some clubs were BSGs in practice, but carried the names of their particular enterprise, one example being Sachsenring Zwickau.

''Dynamo''

The clubs of the interior ministry with strong connection to the secret police.
The clubs of the ministry of defence, usually called ASV Vorwärts.
Established after the 1965 DFV reform, these were:
Apart from these eight, BFC Dynamo and Vorwärts Berlin also became de facto FCs while remaining under the influence of their ministries. An eleventh club, SG Dynamo Dresden was granted the same privileges in regards of player drafting but did not become an autonomous football club.

Fan culture

Club rivalries

Club rivalries developed along several lines. The most common rivalries were those between intra-city or intra-enterprise rivals, and could be found at every tier of GDR football.
More unique were rivalries that formed out of anti-establishment sentiment, with BFC Dynamo proving the foremost target of such feeling. Within Berlin, the Stasi-backed BFC elicited the contempt of the firmly working-class Union Berlin. Outside Berlin, BFC fans found themselves scorned by supporters of Dynamo Dresden. In addition to having been formed out of the forcibly relocated Dresden team of 1954, Dresden fans further accused BFC of benefitting from its status as Erich Mielke's 'favourite' club, despite being itself a patron club of the Stasi.
Upon the establishment of Football Clubs in 1965, another form of rivalry emerged between players and fans of the FCs and BSGs. Those associated with the BSGs frequently took pride in their status as "real" workers teams, and poured scorn on the 'elitist' FCs that benefited from increasing de facto professionalisation of the sport throughout the 1970s.

Fan clubs

Unofficial fan clubs revolving around the GDR's various football clubs were widespread, and were often viewed with suspicion by the ruling SED regime owing to their spontaneous and independent nature. While their express purpose was to organise fan events and produce club-related materials, they were frequently scapegoated for football-related disorder.
The state's accusations of fan club-derived hooliganism steadily gained legitimacy come the 1980s. Infiltration by skinheads, especially amongst the Berlin clubs, saw a shift towards more a more militant culture and a spate of violent incidents.
The DFV attempted to clamp down on fan incidents by offering fan clubs the opportunity to register as official associations. While some fan club members were attracted by the incentive of privileged access to players and match tickets and subsidized travel, others were contemptuous of the very notion of bureaucratic incorporation and the loss of autonomy and spontaneity.