The Oberliga was founded in 1949, and served as GDR football's highest tier of competition throughout the country's existence.
Between 1949 and 1957, the East German Sports Committee (Deutscher Sportausschuß; DS) was officially responsible for administering the country's various leagues via its Football Section (SF).
[2]: 23 Despite the official power accorded to the SF and later the DFV, both bodies lacked total autonomy over major administrative decisions, which were often influenced by the political interventions of state and regional interests.
Officially, the decision was aimed at concentrating the best players in certain locations, with the intention of improving the general quality of East German football.
[4][3] The football team of Dynamo Dresden, the champions in the 1952-53 season, was relocated to East Berlin in November 1954.
Political factors and pressure from Erich Mielke were probably the main reasons behind the relocation of Dynamo Dresden to East Berlin.
This decision was influenced by the desire of GDR political leaders to align the country's institutions with those of the Soviet Union, which employed the calendar-year system in order to avoid playing games in cold and snowy winter weather.
Match attendances suffered during the traditional vacation months of July and August, and GDR clubs - often midway through their domestic seasons - found themselves at a physical disadvantage in UEFA competitions against fresh European sides coming off their summer breaks.
The football clubs were allowed to establish player development programmes and schools within their designated catchment areas.
[9]: 456–7 The move essentially granted them a monopoly over up-and-coming youth prospects, contributing to an ever-increasing gulf in quality between the FCs and ordinary factory clubs (BSGs).
Players in FCs were allowed to train full-time, and were granted access to material privileges such as interest-free loans, cars, or apartments.
The resulting fracas was only settled after intervention from national DTSB chief Manfred Ewald and Socialist Unity Party (SED) Central Committee member Rudolf Hellmann.
The entereprise sports communities can be subdivided into the following:[1] Some industrial branches were particularly unsuccessful due to low funding.
Examples: Established after the 1965 DFV reform, these were:[1] Most sports associations (German: Sportverinigung; SV) were dissolved at the founding of the DTSB in 1957.
However, the sports associations SV Dynamo and ASV Vorwärts continued to exist as districts organizations within the DTSB and were allowed to retain their own statutes.
More unique were rivalries that formed out of anti-establishment sentiment, with BFC Dynamo proving the foremost target of such feeling.
Those associated with the BSGs frequently took pride in their status as "real" workers teams, and poured scorn on the 'elitist' FCs that benefited from increasing de facto professionalisation of the sport throughout the 1970s.
While their express purpose was to organise fan events and produce club-related materials, they were frequently scapegoated for football-related disorder.
While some fan club members were attracted by the incentive of privileged access to players and match tickets and subsidized travel, others were contemptuous of the very notion of bureaucratic incorporation and the loss of autonomy and spontaneity.