Is Berlin a Football City? – Euro 2024, 1. FC Union Berlin, Hertha BSC, & More…
Berlin. The capital city of Germany. Situated at the heart of Europe, it has been the focal point for numerous treaties, wars, and cultural events throughout history.
A city of great power, once separated by the ultimate division before a tentative rebuild towards reunification. Its past is storied.
But what about football?
The City has hosted some of the most renowned sporting events in history. The 1936 Olympic Games, The 2006 World Cup Final, and due to host the Euro 2024 final.
But for it’s club football, it’s slightly different.
Capital cities in Europe are renowned for their footballing powerhouses.
London is home to several that have made their mark on the continent.
Madrid hosts one of the most successful football clubs in history.
Paris and Rome boast some of the most triumphant teams in their countries, whilst Amsterdam, Lisbon, Glasgow, and Belgrade have been home to the European Champions.
Football is a principal part of what makes these capital cities what they are.
But Berlin?
Like with many other trends, Berlin does not follow the norm.
Footballing success in Germany is found elsewhere, in the smaller cities of München and Dortmund.
Even towns like Leverkusen, Bremen, and Hamburg boast richer footballing tapestries than the country’s capital. Why?
The Rise & Fall of Hertha Berlin
It’s not like Berlin is bereft of footballing traditions; Hertha Berlin is evidence of that.
Die Alte Dame (The Old Lady) of German football was founded in 1892 and became a founding member of the German Football Association (DFB) in 1900.
The 1930s brought success to Hertha, becoming German Champions in 1930 and 1931. They are one of the clubs that established the Bundesliga in 1963 and moved into Germany’s national stadium (Olympiastadion), where they have played ever since.
Despite their history and stature in German football, the game’s upper echelon has always been out of reach for Hertha. They enjoyed several qualifications for European football in the late 90s and early 2000s, including a Champions League appearance in 1999. But they have garnered little success beyond that. They have instead seen the complete antithesis, dropping out of the top division multiple times. Die Alte Dame even dropped as low as the third tier in 1986, after years of debt finally caught up with them. As of 2023, Hertha’s fortunes are not much better. The club is preparing for life back in the 2. Bundesliga for the first time since 2013.
Hertha has been overtaken in recent years by another club in the capital. 1. FC Union Berlin.
Die Eisernen (The Iron Ones) reached the Bundesliga for the first time in 2019 and have enjoyed the dizzying heights of European football since.
Founded in 1966 by the National State Trade Union (FDGB), designed to be the club for the workers and formed natural rivals with the clubs run by the police and security services.
Despite Union and Hertha being the only clubs in Berlin to have played top-flight football in recent years, they are not the only football clubs in the capital.
Despite their recently heightened rivalry with Hertha, Union Berlin have a feud with another club that runs deeper.
Like Union, BFC is a club from the former East Berlin. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this was the rivalry in the East. The history between the two clubs is storied.
Also founded in 1966, Dynamo became the club favoured by the secret police (Stasi).
Their connections and state sponsorship allowed them to dominate East German football throughout the 80s, winning ten consecutive East German Championships.
Their close geographical proximity to Union Berlin formed the basis of their rivalry. However, BFC’s relationship with the secret police and Union’s links to the FDGB intensified it.
Games between the two often ended in riots during the 1960/70s.
One game in 1970 ended with Union player Klaus Korn expelled from the DDR-Oberliga after calling a DFB player a “Stasi-pig”.
The fall of the wall spelt disaster from a footballing standpoint for BFC, as the richer teams in the west stripped the dominant teams from the East of their best players. Plus, all teams from East Germany had to restart in the newly formed third tier after the two sides of Germany merged, no matter how successful they had been in the East German leagues. Furthermore, sponsors didn’t want to give their names and money to teams from the former East Germany, leaving BFC bereft of funds. The league demotion and financial hit is one that Dynamo have yet to recover. The club fell out of the third division at the turn of the millennium and dropped further down to the fifth tier. They have since gained promotion back to the fourth division, where they have remained since 2014. Despite their on-field fall from grace, the club still boast a devoted fanbase and gets regular attendances of 3,000 plus.
The Other Clubs of Berlin
Apart from Hertha and Union, other Berlin-based football clubs have played in the Bundesliga since its inception in 1963.
Tennis Borussia Berlin, founded in 1902 in West Berlin, enjoyed two short stints in the German top flight in 1974-75 and 1976-77. The club have experienced drastic peaks and troughs since their days in the Bundesliga, with promotion pushes in the 2. Bundesliga during the late 90s before dropping as low as the sixth tier in 2011. They finished bottom of the Regionalliga Nordost (fourth tier – the same league as BFC) in 2022/23, having gained promotion from the fifth tier in 2020.
That is not all. Viktoria Berlin is another club based in West Berlin. Who, alongside Hertha, were one of the founding members of the DFB. Established in 1889, Viktoria became the strongest club in the capital at the turn of the century, winning two German Championships in 1908 and 1911. Their success steadily declined pre-and post-World War One. They rebranded and were relegated from the top division during the reign of the Third Reich before helping to establish the new Oberliga following World War Two.
They lost their place in the top division in 1963 as the DFB permitted only one team from Berlin to enter the newly formed Bundesliga. That honour went to Hertha. Financial problems hit the club for decades after, and by 1990 they had dropped to the eighth tier of German football. The club underwent another overhaul in 2013, merging with Lichterfelder FC and changing its name to FC Viktoria 1889. They have enjoyed a rebirth of good fortune and have slowly climbed the divisions for the last 15 years. Today Viktoria play in the Regionalliga Nordost (fourth tier – the same league as Dynamo). Their average attendance at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Stadion sat at 711 in 2022/23.
The DFB’s original ruling of allowing only one team from the capital into the Bundesliga may be the most substantial catalyst to Berlin’s stumbling footballing success. It blocked those successful in the old setup from competing at the top. And if they did flourish in the leagues below, promotion wasn’t an option so long as Hertha remained in the Bundesliga. Denying them top-flight football led to their best players seeking moves further up the pyramid and sponsors becoming less keen to pump their money into a team for whom promotion was unlikely.
The introduction of the 2. Bundesliga in 1974 brought a change to the rule. But, for clubs in Berlin, it was too late. Looking down the German football pyramid now, you find more Berlin-based football clubs affected by this.
Sticking with the Regionalliga Nordost, three more teams based in Berlin played in the league during the 2022/23 season. One of which is Berliner AK 07, a side founded in 1907 and has spent the last 100+ years toiling around the midriff of German football. A merger with BSV Mitte in 2004 gave the club strong links to Berlin’s Turkish community, providing them with relative financial stability. They gained promotion to the Regionalliga Nordost in 2012, where they have remained since.
VSG Altglienicke and SV Lichtenberg 47 complete the set. Both are from East Berlin, and neither have enjoyed success. VSG have been in the fourth tier since 2017 and finished this season in fifth. They have never been higher than the Regionalliga Nordost. SV Lichtenberg joined Tennis Borussia in the relegation zone and will join them in the fifth tier.
One club in the NOFV-Oberliga Nord had one record-breaking season in the Bundesliga in 1965/66. The DFB invited SC Tasmania Berlin to compete in the top flight only three weeks before it started after they threw Hertha out for financial irregularities. The DFB needed a Berlin representative in the league, and Tasmania took the offer. It gets its name from its founder’s apparent desire to emigrate to the island of the same name. It is their only season in the Bundesliga, and it was a disaster. They finished the season bottom of the table with the lowest ever points tally (8), the fewest wins (2), the most losses (28), the fewest goals scored (15), the most goals conceded (108), and the lowest Bundesliga attendance record (827 against Borussia Mönchengladbach on 15 January 1966). Most of these records are still intact today.
The club play in the NOFV-Oberliga Nord (fifth tier of German football).
Wait… There’s More
Football in Berlin goes even deeper the further you look down the pyramid. Along with Tasmania, five other clubs from the capital played in the NOFV-Oberliga Nord in 2022/23, representing one-third of the 18 teams in the division. Looking down to the tenth tier of German football, you will find another 23 Berlin-based football teams.
Yet because promotion out of these lower divisions in German football is so challenging, even if you win the league, you have to get through a playoff against the other regional champions in the country. It is difficult for the other clubs in Berlin to gain promotion and grow.
Although most clubs toil around the regional divisions every season, each has its own history, style, devoted fanbase, and culture. Clubs with geographical backgrounds, including Balkan, Israeli, and Turkish. Clubs with religious backdrops: such as TuS Makkabi Berlin, who have a Judaism foundation. There are even clubs with political backgrounds. SC Babelsberg supporters hold potent left-wing, anti-fascist ideologies. Each brings a different representation of Berlin to the football league, and each stand for the people they represent rather than their success on the pitch.
However, some continue to do both. In 2023, Makkabi won the Berlin Cup, which earned them entry into the DFB Pokal (Germany’s cup competition) for the first time, where they will face Bundesliga side VfL Wolfsburg.
Berlin provided 24 of the 86 DFB founding members, so it is hard to argue that Berlin isn’t a football city. It has more football clubs than any other city in Germany, and its presence is evident in every one of the 20 districts in the capital. However, due to the sheer size of Berlin and its breadth of ideologies and people, football still takes a back seat. Its music; art; and fashion scenes still take precedence over the sport, especially in the centre. Yet even for football in Berlin, focus on clubs from outside the city had a stronger hold on the people. Up until recently, it was more common to see Paris Saint-Germain or Galatasaray shirts than it was to see shirts of clubs from the capital. However, this has improved in recent years, and Berlin football is the most prominent it has been for a long time.
The Answer?
Union Berlin’s promotion in 2019 created the platform for the first-ever Berlin derby in the Bundesliga. It also reawakened the focus on football by not just creating new Union fans but refreshing the Hertha scene by giving their fans something new to get fired up for. This rebirth is evident from the number of club stickers plastered around the city. Club stickers are a big part of German football culture, and supporters will place them everywhere to spread the word about their club. Maybe five-six years ago, you would see a handful of Hertha stickers in the centre of Berlin, and you would have to go to the Eastern areas closer to Köpenick to see any Union ones. Now they can pop up all over the city, which is a testament to how football has become more prominent in Berlin over the last few years.
There has also been growth in support for Women’s football in Berlin over the last year or two. 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam have previously flown the flag for the city in the Frauen-Bundesliga. The club closely associated with Hertha has played in the Champions League. However, they finished bottom of the league in 2022/23 and were relegated. Ending a 26-year stay in the top flight. Elsewhere in the city, Union Berlin Women’s team turned professional in 2022 and plays in the third tier. While Viktoria Berlin have been growing and climbing the pyramid thanks to the backing of wealthy investors and just missed out on promotion to the Frauen-Bundesliga in 2022/23.
Despite such footballing depth, Berlin still hasn’t seen much success in terms of silverware. Why? It may come down to the city’s chaotic nature. Economically it is all over the place. Even though it is the capital of one of the most powerful countries in Europe, Berlin is poor. It is not the financial powerhouse of Germany. The wall may have come down thirty years ago, but the economic struggles of the East still rage on today. The chaos is evident when you observe the rebuilding of the airport in the city. Due to be finished in 2011, the Berlin Brandenberg Airport didn’t open until late 2020. Which was 10 years later than scheduled and three times over budget. Berliners do not meet the standard German stereotypes either. Efficient, orderly, and punctual. These are three things that Germans are renowned for and three things that Berlin is not. All these issues combined have created an antithesis of success as a city, which has translated to its football teams.
It’s tricky to know where the football culture in Berlin is heading. The support may be strong, but the numbers and league positions are stagnant, especially for the lower clubs. Union Berlin’s rise to the Champions League has begun to put worldwide footballing eyes on the city. But how long people remain invested may depend on Die Eisernen’s ability to stay at the top. Accompanied by Hertha’s struggles and no viable success from the other clubs, the city could likely remain the anomaly.
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