KFV co-founder Walther Bensemann established Internationaler FC Karlsruhe, the first football team in south Germany, in 1889.

KFV figures in the strange story of Germany's first national championship in 1903 which was won by VfB Leipzig in a 7–2 victory over DFC Prague.

Prag was awarded a win by forfeit when their opponents failed to show, and so made an uncontested advance to the final in spite of vehement protests by KFV.

Denied a place in the national final, Karlsruhe did manage to arrange to challenge Leipzig the following year in a match representing the contest that might have been, but lost the game 3–7.

KFV's championship was earned under the direction of English coach William Townley, a prominent figure in the early history of the game in Germany.

[1] While playing for the national team in 1912, KFV's Gottfried Fuchs scored 10 goals in a contest against Russia to set a German international match record that still stands.

KFV made its re-appearance after the First World War, first in the Kreisliga Südwest and then in the Bezirksliga Württemberg-Baden, Gruppe Baden with the capture of the league championship in 1926.

While they went on to dominate their division, the team was not able to make its way out of the South German league playoffs and back onto the national stage.

[4][5] In 1933, Karlsruher FV took up play in the Gauliga Baden, one of the sixteen first division leagues established in the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich.

The club won two titles in the Amateurliga Nordbaden (III) in 1952 and 1974 but after this the team fell to tier V Kreisliga play before being disqualified from league operations in October 2004, after collapsing financially.