FDGB-Pokal


The FDGB-Pokal was an elimination football tournament held annually in East Germany. It was the second most important national title in East German football after the DDR-Oberliga championship. The founder of the competition was East Germany's major trade union.

History

The inaugural FDGB Pokal was contested in 1949, four years before the initial DFB-Pokal was played in the western half of the country. The first national cup competition had been the Tschammerpokal introduced in 1935.
Each football club which participated in the East German football league system was entitled to enter the tournament. Clubs from the lower leagues played in regional qualification rounds, with the winners joining the teams of the DDR-Oberliga and DDR-Liga in the main round of the tournament of the following year. Each elimination was determined by a single game held on the ground of one of the two participating teams.
Until the mid-80s the field of competition was made up of as many as sixty teams playing in five rounds due to the large number of eligible clubs in the country. Beginning in 1975 the final was held each year in the Berliner Stadion der Weltjugend and drew anywhere from 30,000 to 55,000 spectators. The last cup final, played in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was a 1-0 victory by Hansa Rostock over Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt, which drew a crowd of only 4,800.
The most successful side in 42 years of competition was 1. FC Magdeburg which celebrated seven FDGB Cup wins ; one of those wins ultimately led to victory in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 1973-74.
The only winners of the competition to reach the final of the DFB-Pokal since the re-unification of the country are 1. FC Union Berlin, who appeared in the 2001 German Cup final, but lost 0–2 to Schalke. To date, the only other former East German club to appear in the German Cup final is Energie Cottbus.

Finals

Notes:

Performance by club

The performance of various clubs is shown in the following table:
Clubs are named by the last name they used before the German reunification.
ClubWinnersRunners-upSemi-finalistsWinning Years
SG Dynamo Dresden 1
7
4
6
1952, 1971, 1977, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1990
1. FC Magdeburg 2
7
–
3
1964, 1965, 1969, 1973, 1978, 1979, 1983
1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig 3
4
4
6
1976, 1981, 1986, 1987
FC Carl Zeiss Jena 4
4
3
8
1960, 1972, 1974, 1980
BSG Sachsenring Zwickau 5
3
1
5
1963, 1967, 1975
Berliner FC Dynamo6
3
6
7
1959, 1988, 1989
Vorwärts Berlin 7
2
3
8
1954, 1970
BSG Chemie Leipzig 8
2
1
–
1957, 1966
Hallescher FC Chemie 9
2
–
5
1956, 1962
F.C. Hansa Rostock 10
1
5
4
1991
BSG Wismut Aue 11
1
1
4
1955
1. FC Union Berlin
1
1
1
1968
BSG Motor Dessau
1
–
–
1949
BSG Stahl Thale 12
1
–
–
1950
FSV Lokomotive Dresden13
1
–
–
1958
FC Karl-Marx-Stadt
–
3
5
—
FC Rot-Weiß Erfurt 14
–
2
6
—
BSG Chemie Zeitz15
–
1
1
—
BSG Lokomotive Stendal
–
1
1
—
BSG Wismut Gera16
–
1
–
—
BSG Einheit Pankow
–
1
–
—
SG Dynamo Schwerin
–
1
–
—
BSG Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt gründeten
–
1
–
—
FC Energie Cottbus
–
–
3
—
BSG Empor Wurzen17
–
–
2
—
Fortuna Babelsberg
–
–
1
—
ZSG Burg
–
–
1
—
BSG Motor West Karl-Marx-Stadt
–
–
1
—
Lokomotive Weimar
–
–
1
—
Stahl Brandenburg
–
–
1
—

Notes: