The German Democratic Republic Football League System
From 1949 until 1991 East Germany had its own football league system. It had its own nationwide league called Oberliga which existed throughout the whole GDR history. Since 1954 the DDR-Oberliga consisted of 14 teams; the two worst-placed teams were relegated to the Liga, which was introduced in 1950. Following the dissolution of the five federal states the five old Landesliga divisions were replaced by 15 new Bezirksliga divisions as the third level of the league system. By 1955 however, there was another change in the league system as the 2nd DDR-Liga was created as a level between the DDR-Liga and the Bezirksligen.
In 1962, the DDR-Liga was once more divided into two divisions and the 2nd DDR-Liga was abandoned.In 1971 the DDR-Liga was divided into five Divisions, and for that reason was now similar to the Landesliga of the 1940s. The five division champions played a qualification round to determine which clubs would promote to the Oberliga. Since 1984 the Liga consisted of two divisions again, whose champions were directly promoted to the Oberliga. Below the two DDR-Liga divisions were the fifteen Bezirksligen whose champions had to play a promotional round to determine the six clubs that would move up to the 2nd Division.
Below the Bezirksliga there were (descending) Bezirksklasse, Kreisliga and, at the lowest level, several Kreisklasse divisions, as they actually are today.
Read more about this topic: Football In East Germany
Famous quotes containing the words the german, german, democratic, republic, football, league and/or system:
“The Germans are always too late. They are late, like music, which is always the last of the arts to express a world condition,—when that world condition is already in its final stages. They are abstract and mystical.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“Experts are saying that President Bush’s goal now is to politically humiliate Saddam Hussein. Why don’t we just make him the next Democratic presidential nominee?”
—Jay Leno (b. 1950)
“People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
“... in the minds of search committees there is the lingering question: Can she manage the football coach?”
—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of government, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)