History
The club won local titles in the 1900s and went on to their greatest successes in the 1920s when they won several South German league titles. In spite of their good results the side did not qualify for first division play after the re-organization of German football into sixteen Gauligen under the Third Reich in 1933.
The club's next appearance in the upper levels of German football was in the 2.Oberliga West (II) in 1961. After the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963 Siegen played in the second division Regionalliga West for a single season before slipping to the third tier Amateurliga Westfalen. In the mid-80's the club fell even further to the Verbandsliga Westfalen-SW (IV) and spent nine of the next eleven seasons at that level.
Siegen recovered and returned to third division football in 1997. After two consecutive 16th place finishes – including a brush with relegation in 2003 which they avoided only because SV Waldhof Mannheim and SSV Reutlingen were denied licenses due to their financial weakness – the club managed to claw its way to the Second Bundesliga on the strength of a surprising second place result in 2006. However finishing 18th they faced relegation right away. Despite an 11th place in the Regionalliga Süd they finished in relegation again due to financial issues. In the 2008–09 season they played in the fifth division.
Read more about this topic: Sportfreunde Siegen
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
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