History of German football
Resident English merchants and industrialists brought football to the western Rhineland in the second half of the 19th century, alongside traditional equestrian sports.
The competitive sport of football, which also emphasized the individual performance of an athlete, stood in stark contrast to these ideals; it was referred to as ‘loutishness’ or ‘English disease’ and its practice was initially banned almost everywhere in the clubs.
Konrad Koch, a progressive teacher of German and classical languages at the Martino-Katharineum grammar school in Braunschweig, was the first person to succeed in dispelling the reservations about football.
[1] In 1874 Koch and his colleague August Hermann organized what is believed to be the first-ever football match in Germany, between pupils from their school Martino-Katharineum.
They met regularly on Saturdays in front of the entrance to the Großer Garten, very close to today's Rudolf Harbig Stadium, and organised the game, which seemed strange to most spectators at the time.
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.
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 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.
One of those six matches was played at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm - Germany beat Russia 16-0 on 1 July 1912, which remains the biggest victory for a German football team.
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 DFB gradually lost its independence as it was assimilated into the Deutscher Reichsausschuss für Leibesübungen (DRA) (Reich Committee for Physical Education).
Twenty years back, FC Schalke 04 dominated German football during the Nazi era and was often held up for propaganda purposes as an example of the new Germany.
After the Anschluss, the forced union of Austria with Germany, Vienna's Rapid Wien captured the Tschammerpokal in 1938 and the German national championship in 1941, the latter with a 4–3 win over Schalke, who had been three goals ahead with just fifteen minutes to play in the game.
As the tide turned against Germany, the Gauliga began to crumble as players were called away to military service or were killed in the conflict, stadiums were bombed and travel became difficult.
However, within a year, sports-only organizations without political affiliation were permitted, and in the American, British and French occupation zones, most pre-war clubs were reconstituted.
In 1949, Nürnberg and each winning side since VfB Leipzig in 1903, would have their names engraved on the newly created Meisterschale, nicknamed "the salad bowl" for its shape.
An oddity of the 1954 World Cup preliminary rounds was the fielding of a separate side by the German state of Saarland, which was occupied by the French and did not become a part of West Germany again until after a plebiscite and treaty negotiation.
Under new DFB president Hermann Gösmann (elected that very day) the Bundesliga was created in Dortmund at the Westfalenhallen on 28 July 1962 to begin play starting with the 1963–64 season.
The politics of the Cold War era led to a space being held open for a Berlin side to replace Hertha in a show of solidarity with the former capital city.
West Germany made another appearance in the final of the World Cup in 1966, losing (4–2) to England in extra time that included a famously controversial goal.
The young league got off to a difficult start in the decade as a scandal broke with Kickers Offenbach president Horst-Gregorio Canellas putting forward evidence of players being bribed to affect the outcome of games.
Attendance rose steadily after the end of the bribery scandal, putting some teams on solid enough financial footings to be able to attract the first foreign stars to the league in the 1977–78 season.
The German domestic game became a graceless, rough-edged, brute physical contest devoid of the kinds of star players fans had enjoyed watching in earlier decades.
To facilitate the union with the eastern league the Bundesliga temporarily expanded to 20 clubs in the 1991–92 season and added the DDR-Oberliga's top two sides, Dynamo Dresden and Hansa Rostock.
In 2005, German football was once again overshadowed by the discovery of a match-fixing scandal involving second division referee Robert Hoyzer, who confessed to fixing and betting on matches in the 2.
One of the problems currently facing the league is in the performance and fate of clubs from the former East Germany, which are finding it difficult to compete with the wealthy, established western sides.
One-time GDR clubs are unable to attract lucrative sponsorships, cannot afford the salaries needed to hold on to their "homegrown" talent, and find themselves playing in crumbling or primitive stadium facilities.
However, the organization had to face up to the reality of there not being enough suitable facilities in the old DDR –not limited to stadiums, but including hotels, restaurants and other visitor needs, and transportation infrastructure–, with the result that the east finds itself underrepresented.
The situation fits into the broader context of the effects of German reunification on East Germany and the resentment that many Ossis feel for their western cousins.
RB Leipzig was founded by initiative of drink company Red Bull GmbH, whose involvement in the club has sparked new discussions about commercialism in professional football.
