What is the oldest football club in Germany?
2807582#29
Dresden English Football Club was founded on 18 March 1874 and was the first association football club in Germany, and likely the first outside Great Britain. In 1874, over 70 members participated, primarily Englishmen working in Dresden, watched by hundreds of spectators. Another German club, 1860 Munich did not play football until 1899, although it has its origins in a gymnastics and fitness club formed in 1848 and reestablished in the year indicated by its name.
Oldest football clubs
4588271#2
"Altona" is one of Germany's oldest football clubs: they were part of the Altona-Hamburg football league formed in 1894, as well as one of the founding clubs of the German Football Association (Deutscher Fussball Bund or German Football Association) at Leipzig in 1900. In 1903 at their home ground, they hosted the first-ever German national championship final played between "VfB Leipzig" and "DFC Prague". The match was refereed by "AFC" player Franz Behr, who also served as the vice-chairman of the newly formed DFB until 1904. The club rescued the match by providing a new ball when the original one proved to be unsuitable for play. The hosts of the country's first title match never won or even played in a national final, being able to advance only as far as the semi-finals in 1903 and 1909, and the quarter-finals in 1914.
Altonaer FC von 1893
7901420#0
BFC Germania 1888 is a German football club from Berlin. Founded on 15 April 1888, it is the oldest still active football club in the country.
BFC Germania 1888
7901420#2
BFC Germania 1888 was part of the country's first football league, the BDF (Bund Deutscher Fußballspieler or Federation of German Football Players) which was formed in November 1890 and was active until February 1892. The league was made up of the Berlin-based clubs BFC Vorwärts 1890, BFC Askania 1890, BFC Borussia 1890, BFC Concordia 1890, BFC Hellas 1890, BFC Tasmania 1890 and BFC Teutonia 1891. Germania emerged the winner in a tournament staged by the league, and as the DBF was the only football league in the country at the time, can lay claim to being Germany's first champion. Club records indicate that "BFC" then defended their title, but no supporting evidence has been found.
BFC Germania 1888
7901420#8
Other teams which were formed before Germania including Berliner Cricket-Club 1883, BFC Frankfurt 1885, and SC Germania zu Hamburg 1887 (one of the predecessor sides which formed SV Hamburg in 1919) were also first organized to play other sports – cricket, rugby, and athletics respectively. Of these three clubs only "Hamburg" is still playing.BFC Germania 1888 has a rich sporting heritage and played an important role in the early development of football in Germany.
BFC Germania 1888
7901420#5
BFC Germania 1888 continued to play on the local amateur circuit. After World War II occupying Allied authorities banned all organizations in the country including sports and football clubs. The team was re-established in 1946 as "SG Neu-Tempelhof" and appeared fleetingly in the Amateurliga Berlin (III) in 1948–49 where they were able only to earn a single point from a draw in 18 matches.
BFC Germania 1888
7901420#1
BFC Germania 1888 was founded by 17-year-old Paul Jestram, his three brothers, and a number of their schoolmates from Askanischen Gymnasium at a time when football was not yet common in Germany, the first football games having been played in Berlin and Hamburg in the winter of 1881–82 by expatriate Englishmen. No football pitches had yet been built so "BFC" played on the Tempelhofer field where an airport would later be constructed.
BFC Germania 1888
26964076#3
The oldest rugby union club in Germany is the DSV 78 Hannover, formed in 1878 as "DFV Hannover", in a time when a differencation between rugby and football was not yet made in Germany. While there is older clubs in Germany then "DSV 78", like the Heidelberger TV which was formed in 1846, their rugby departments were established after "DSV's".
List of rugby union clubs in Germany
30555642#3
The Cologne Crocodiles were formed in 1980, making it one of the oldest American football clubs in Germany. The club, in its first season, took part in the Nordwestdeutsche Football Liga, a renegade league which only existed for two seasons, 1980 and 1981.
Cologne Crocodiles
5128065#0
Berliner Fußball-Club Viktoria 1889 was a German sports club based in the Tempelhof district of Berlin. Football, rugby, and cricket came to continental Europe in the late 19th century, and these "English games" became immediately popular in many countries. Viktoria was the oldest club in Germany that had both teams playing football and cricket. It was one of the founding members of the German Football Association (DFB) in 1900.
BFC Viktoria 1889
754648#2
The Panthers were formed on 1 May 1978 and, while not the first American football club in Germany—this honour going to the Frankfurter Löwen who were formed in 1977 but folded in the mid-1980s—are the oldest still existing club.
Düsseldorf Panther
10926233#21
Berlin's oldest Jewish football club, Bar Kochba Berlin, founded in 1898, merged with another, Hakoah Berlin in 1930 to form Bar Kochba-Hakoah. Under the Nazi regime, Jewish clubs were segregated in 1933 and dissolved in 1938. Jewish clubs competed in other sports from the end of the war, but it was not until 1970 that Bar Kochba-Hakoah were revived as a football club, as a member of the Maccabi World Union which encourages Jewish sport. Now competing as TuS Makkabi Berlin in the sixth-tier Berlin-Liga, the club made headlines in Germany and the Jewish State of Israel in October 2006. Despite the club's low profile and the increase in tolerance in German society, the club were subjected to anti-Semitic, Neo-Nazi chants from fans and players of VSG Altglienicke.
Football in Berlin
42984280#1
FC Viktoria 1889 Berlin was formed in a merger of BFC Viktoria 1889, one of the oldest football clubs in Germany, and Lichterfelder FC, a club which had gone through a number of name changes and mergers before.
FC Viktoria 1889 Berlin
21244791#3
F.W.F., as a leader of the pupils of the "Realgymnasium", initiated the formation of a football club and, together with 24 other young men, he formed the "Deutschen Fußball-Verein Hannover gegründet 1878", the oldest still existing rugby club in Germany.
Ferdinand-Wilhelm Fricke
21219045#5
The game of rugby was introduced in the club in the early 1890s by Edward Hill Ullrich, who was partly of English descend and had a great love of "English" games, translating the rules of rugby into German. It is from this beginnings that the "HRK" claims to be the oldest rugby club in Germany. This is true in the sense that it is the oldest rugby-playing club in Germany but other clubs have an older rugby department.
Heidelberger RK
7901420#7
German football clubs typically include the date of their founding in their club's name. A number of sides – for example SSV Ulm 1846, VfL Bochum, and TSV 1860 München – have earlier founding dates, but were formed as gymnastics or athletics clubs and did not take up football until Germania's formation.
BFC Germania 1888
7901420#4
In 1900 the team left to join the VDBV (Verband Deutscher Ballspiel Vereine or Federation of German Ballplay Teams) and in that same year became a founding member of the DFB (Deutscher Fussball Bund or German Football Association) at Leipzig. However, with the growth of the game and the arrival on the scene of many new teams "Germania" became less prominent. By the start of World War I the club had fallen out of Berlin's top flight competition.
BFC Germania 1888
7901420#6
Today the club plays lower tier football in the local city leagues. In 2001 they competed in the Berzirksliga Berlin (VII) and over the course of the following two seasons advanced to the Verbandsliga Berlin (V) where they spent the next three seasons. The next three seasons saw the club relegated successively from the Verbandsliga to the Kreisliga Berlin A (IX). Since 2010 "Germania" has played in the Kreisliga Berlin B (X).
BFC Germania 1888