Search: 'Hansa Rostock'

Uli Hesse on the fraught play-offs to reach the Second Bundesliga in 1991

4 June ~ Twenty-five years ago Hansa Rostock won the last-ever East German cup final, but that wasn’t the end of football in the GDR. After the German reunification, East German teams were distributed into the West German league pyramid. When the Bundesliga was formed in 1963 the clubs were admitted base on a ranking calculated over the previous 12 years, yet for the teams in the GDR’s Oberliga, it came down to how they performed over just one season.

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Karsten Blaas explains how indecision over fireworks at German football matches has caused fights between ultras and police on the terraces

For their live coverage of the second round of the German cup, played in late October, the TV station ZDF chose Borussia Dortmund’s encounter with Dynamo Dresden, east Germany’s best supported team, who are now back in the second tier after a decade of decline. What happened on the pitch was as dull as had been expected. Dortmund won a lacklustre game 2-0. The events on the terraces and outside the ground, however, had a long-term impact, raising questions about police tactics and the role of the ultra movement in German football.

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With the Berlin Wall coming down in October 1990, Paul Joyce recalls the first Bundesliga season where West Germany's teams met those from East Germany

The long-term significance
After reunification in October 1990, this was the first season in which teams from the former GDR joined the West German football pyramid. Only two East German sides (Oberliga champions Hansa Rostock and runners-up Dynamo Dresden) were allowed into the Bundesliga, which was expanded to 20 clubs. A further six GDR clubs entered a regionalised second division.

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The fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the end of the Oberliga. By Paul Joyce

The long-term significance
The opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, meant free movement for players and fans – and the end of the Oberliga. As reunification gathered pace, the collapse of state organisations that sponsored GDR clubs plunged football in eastern Germany into a financial crisis from which it has yet to recover.

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Julius Bergmann looks at the alarming recent rise in racism at German matches

Long before Anton Ferdinand and Micah Richards made allegations of verbal abuse from opponents during England Under-21s’ recent win in Leverkusen, German football had been shaken by a series of racially motivated incidents. Werder Bremen striker Patrick Owomoyela was branded as “non-German” by an extreme right party when he was being considered for the 2006 World Cup and Schalke’s Gerald Asamoah, another Germany player, was subject to abuse during a cup tie in Rostock. In Aachen a referee threatened to abandon a Bundesliga match unless offensive chanting stopped. For many, the real low point came when Germany fans sang discriminatory songs during the Euro 2008 qualifier in Bratislava in October.

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