History of German Football - Early History

Early History

Prior to the formation of the Bundesliga, German football was played at an amateur level in a large number of sub-regional leagues (until 1945) which, in post-war times, had a top layer of semi-professional regional Oberligen (Premier Leagues). Regional champions and, from 1925 onwards, runners-up played a series of playoff matches for the right to compete in a final game for the national championship. On January 28, 1900, a national association, the Deutscher Fussball Bund (DFB) was founded in Leipzig with 86 member clubs. From the start, the DFB was - and still is - a federation of regional associations. The first recognised national championship team was VfB Leipzig, who beat DFC Prague 7-2 in a game played in Altona on May 31, 1903.

The nascent German association permitted teams from outside the country in their new championship, as long as they were members of one of its regional associations. This is how Prague, a team from Austria-Hungary, managed an appearance in the German national final. Once the DFB joined FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) in 1904, clubs from outside the country were no longer permitted to play in Germany.

From 1903 to 1944, teams played for the Viktoria Meisterschaftstrophäe (Victoria Championship Trophy). In 1908, a cup competition named Kronprinzenpokal for the regional representative XIs was started, the trophy having been donated by Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia. The Viktoria was originally intended to be awarded, on an annual alternating basis, to the championship teams of the DFB and the nation's rugby union teams; however, football became the more dominant sport, the Rugby clubs left the federation and the trophy stayed with the DFB. Championship play skipped a year in 1904, was interrupted by World War I between 1914 and 1918, and again at the end of World War II between 1944 and 1946.

The last team to win the Viktoria was Dresdner SC, who beat the air-force club Luftwaffen SV Hamburg in Berlin's Olympiastadion 4-0 to end the 1943–44 competition. In the confusion at the end of World War II, the trophy disappeared. It was re-discovered decades later in an East German bank safe-deposit box where it had been placed by a Dresden supporter for safekeeping. It has since been returned to the DFB. In the meantime, a new championship trophy, the Meisterschale ("Championship Plate"), sometimes nicknamed "die Salatschüssel" (the salad bowl), was created in 1949.

In 1919, there were 150,000 registered football players in Germany; by 1932, there were more than a million. In spite of the formation of a national association, German football held to an ideal of amateurism built around regional and local sports associations who felt that professionalism would diminish sportsmanship and local participation in the game. In the early 1930s, the DFB's president, Felix Linnemann, pushed for the creation of a professional league, or Reichsliga, in which the country's best teams would compete for the national championship. The idea was rebuffed by the regional federations dominating the sport.

¹ called "Landesliga" in some parts of the country, "Verbandsliga" in others, and in some parts there is a Verbandsliga (V) and a Landesliga (VI).
² the Bezirksoberliga is not established in all areas of the country, e.g. in Mittelrhein.
³ the Kreisliga is not established in all areas of the country, e.g. in Mittelrhein.