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 german, democratic, republic, football, league and/or system:
“Everything ponderous, viscous, and solemnly clumsy, all long- winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among Germans—forgive me the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, being a reflection of the “good old time” to which it belongs, and a reflection of German taste at a time when there still was a “German taste”Ma rococo taste in moribus et artibus.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Lucas: You’re the Democratic nominee for Senator.
John McKay: You make that sound like a death sentence.”
—Jeremy Larner, U.S. screenwriter. Lucas (Peter Boyle)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“We’re the victims of a disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the law and order league are scouring out the dregs of the town. C’mon be a glorified wreck like me.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)
“The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)