With about 1,000 members in departments for track and field, association football, speedskating, table tennis, fistball, aerobics, sports for the handicapped and gymnastics it belongs to the biggest clubs of the city.

In its current form the club was founded on 15 July 1950 as BSG Turbine Halle, BSG being the abbreviation for Betriebssportgemeinschaft, meaning "company sports community," which was an organisational form of sports clubs in East Germany.

Large parts of the football departement of BSG Turbine Halle, including the first team and its place in the DDR-Oberliga, was delegated to sports club SC Chemie Halle-Leuna in November 1954.

In the ensuing play-off matches for the German Championship Wacker reached the semifinals in 1921, there losing at home in front of a crowd of 12,000 1–5 to the later winners 1.

In the season 1951–52 the average rose to 22,170 per match and Turbine won the championship of East Germany, ahead of SV Deutsche Volkspolizei Dresden and defenders BSG Chemie Leipzig.

Worse, after this season some of the most important players like Otto Knefler and coach Alfred "Fred" Schulz, who led the team to both championships, made off to West Germany in the context of the uprising of 1953 in East Germany.

In Halle this led to the foundation of SC Chemie Halle-Leuna on 18 September 1954 and a large part of the football department of Turbine was transferred to this new entity.

Chemie Halle-Leuna were given the Oberliga spot of Turbine, which was kept alive but forthwith played in lower leagues.

The football department of the club remains in the lower divisions and it plays today in the eighth tier Landesklasse.