Only in Niedersachsen, Bremen, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Berlin were these leagues set at the second level.
A club could also decline to take part in the promotion round and play in the amateur championship instead.
The winner of each of those leagues qualified for the amateur championship, which was played as the years before, in a knock-out format with home-and-away games, including the final in the first season, 1978–79.
East Germany and West-Berlin were sub-divided in three new Oberligas while the 'berliga Berlin was disbanded.
In its last season, the championship was played with only three teams, the runners-up from West/Südwest and Süd and the winner of Nordost.
Each played each other once only and the group winner Tennis Borussia Berlin was named German amateur champion.
This last edition, played without a final for the first time, was much more a promotion round with the amateur title being only a footnote.
In May 2006, the chairman of the DFB (German Football Association), Theo Zwanziger, voiced his interest in re-establishing a national amateur championship from 2008 onwards, after the 3.
He left open as to whether the competition should be for the winners of Regionalliga (IV) or Oberliga (V) play.
[1] The SC Jülich, the only club to win the title three times in a row, was the feature of a documentary by a German sports network, the Deutsches Sportfernsehen — DSF, about Germany's most successful amateur club.
The club had fallen on hard times and almost folded in the 1990s, dropping to the lowest tier of the local league system before recovering.
Fifteen teams took part in the competitions first edition, taking place in June 1951, qualified from the following leagues: The term "amateur" in German football nowadays does not quite mean the same as in other countries; it does not as such indicate that a player does not get paid but rather means the player is paid below a certain level, often a so-called Aufwandsentschädigung, which literally means "reimbursement of costs".
Rather, in comparison with the league system in the United Kingdom, the term amateur could be translated with non-league.