Football club (, FC) was a designation for a specially promoted club for elite football in East Germany.
The football clubs were formed in 1965 and 1966 as centers of excellence in East German football. The football clubs enjoyed considerable advantages over other sports communities in East German football in terms of material conditions and talent recruitment. All designated football clubs had their own catchment areas and promising players were ordered to play for them.
In addition to the ten designated football clubs, sports community SG Dynamo Dresden was also promoted in a similar way to the designated football clubs from 1968.
General There was no traditional club system in East German football. The traditional and self-governing clubs had been effectively banned in 1948 and replaced across the board by nation-wide state-run and controlled bodies, the so-called "sports associations" (, SV).
A system with elite sports clubs (, SC) under the various sports associations was then introduced in East German sports in the mid-1950s. The football teams of the sports clubs came to dominate the DDR-Oberliga.
Football was eventually given a special position in East German sports after a decision by the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) on 18 August 1965. The decision envisioned the formation of dedicated football clubs.
Ten football departments were then separated from their sports clubs and re-organized as ten dedicated football clubs by two resolutions from the German Gymnastics and Sports Federation (, DTSB) and the German Football Association of the GDR (, DFV). The ten football clubs were formed from December 1965 to January 1966.
History Founding The sports clubs were supposed to develop sports in general. However, the main interest of the club management was often football. This was reflected in the use of personnel and other resources in the clubs. The neglect of other sports was one of the reasons for the decision to separate football from the sports clubs. An analysis by the DTSB during the summer of 1964 also showed that football in East Germany had fallen behind the rest of the world. East German football teams had only made small progress compared with the extraordinary development of world football since 1945.
The DTSB and the DFV proposed two solutions to tackle the problem: the best football players should be concentrated in a few football teams and the football departments should be separated from the sports clubs and re-organized as independent football clubs. The concentration of the best football players in the football clubs should be facilitated by better salaries and bonuses, but also through better professional opportunities, such as the prospect of a place at a university. The decision by the Secretariat of the SED Central Committee on 18 August 1965 to form football clubs was an attempt to get football back under the political and technical control of the DTSB in order to "ensure a considerable increase in performance in football". The new football clubs were meant to provide stability to the game at the top level and to supply the national team with talent.
The new football clubs were planned to be evenly spread out among the regional districts of East Germany. However, there was no interest of founding football clubs in Bezirk Neubrandenburg, Bezirk Potsdam and Bezirk Suhl. Also Bezirk Frankfurt, Bezirk Cottbus and Bezirk Schwerin would eventually be without a football club. Ten football departments were eventually separated from their sports club and re-organized as football clubs from December 1965 to January 1966. All football clubs except FC Carl Zeiss Jena in Bezirk Gera were located in regional district capitals or in East Berlin.
The original plan had envisioned only one football club per regional district. However, a total of three football were eventually founded in East Berlin. They were FC Vorwärts Berlin, BFC Dynamo and 1. FC Union Berlin. Only two football clubs had been planned for East Berlin. 1. FC Union Berlin had not been part of the plan. The founding of the club likely owed much to the intervention of the powerful chairman of the national state trade union FDGB and Politburo member Herbert Warnke. Both FC Vorwärts Berlin and BFC Dynamo were associated with the armed organs (). Herbert Warnke therefore argued for the formation of a civil football club for the working population in East Berlin. The founding of 1. FC Union Berlin was even more remarkable as the football team of sports club TSC Berlin only played in the second tier DDR-Liga at the time. All other teams of football clubs played in the first tier DDR-Oberliga. 1. FC Union Berlin was thus elevated into the upper tier of elite clubs.
The ten football clubs were made into centers of excellence () in East German football and were given the same rights a sports clubs. They were given permission to draw on the best players in the country. Promising players would be ordered to play for them. Liberal financial support from the DTSB and from large state-owned enterprises were meant to ensure their autonomy. The football clubs would have privileged access to talents within designated geographical and administrative areas. All football clubs were assigned one or two regional districts as catchments areas by their funding. The three football clubs in East Berlin also had access to one third each of East Berlin. The football clubs should take a more methodical approach to the youth work. They should form youth teams in all age groups and the training in the youth classes should be improved. As an example, BFC Dynamo immediately planned to expand its number of youth teams from 14 to 26 by its founding.
The football clubs would be able to establish structured programs for the development of young talented players in special training centers (, TZ) and sports schools. Training centers (TZ) would eventually form the basis of the East German selection and screening system in competitive sports. They were the first preparatory stage for the support of children found suitable for sports. Training in training centers (TZ) usually started at the age of 10. The training course usually lasted for three to four years. From the training centers, the best young talents could then be delegated to a Children and Youth Sports Schools (, KJS) and then a sports club (SC) or a football club (FC). The DFV would gradually build 196 training centers (TZ) based on guidelines from the DTSB across East Germany from the beginning of the 1970s. Young talented players from the age of 13 started to be enrolled into elite Children and Youth Sports Schools (KJS) at the same time.
No football club had been founded in Bezirk Dresden. It had long been planned to merge SG Dynamo Dresden with the football department of sports club SC Einheit Dresden, in order concentrate the best footballers in the regional district into one club. A similar thing had been done in Leipzig. However, a tug of war developed between the President of SV Dynamo Erich Mielke and the SED First secretary in Bezirk Dresden Werner Krolikowski. Mielke did not want to give up SG Dynamo Dresden, while Krolikowski advocated for the establishment of a civil football club. The stalemate continued for one and a half year. The football department of SC Einheit Dresden was then reorganized as FSV Lokomotive Dresden on 12 January 1966. SG Dynamo Dresden was then declared a regional district center of excellence in Bezirk Dresden by the regional district board () of the DTSB on 5 August 1968. The club could now draw on the best talents in the whole regional district. SG Dynamo Dresden would enjoy the same funding and the same privileges as a designated football club, although it retained its designation as a "Sports Community" (, SG). Without this support, the club's future success would have been hard to achieve.
Further developments East German sports was fundamentally reformed in the 1969 Competitive Sports Resolution (). The 1969 Competitive Sports Resolution was adopted by the SED Politburo on 8 April 1969 and then by the Presidium of the DTSB on 22 April 1969. The resolution was based on the comprehensive sports policy document "Baseline for the Development of Performance sport in the GDR up until 1980" (). The sports policy document has been adopted by the Secretariat of the SED Central Committee on 19 March 1969.
The 1969 Competitive Sports Resolution divided East German sports into two categories "Sport I" and "Sport II". The resolution aimed to concentrate resources on those sports with the greatest record and medal potential. The sports that were considered worth pursuing for Olympic medals were allocated to Sport I. The sports in Sport I were eligible for generous state subsidies, access to the comprehensive system of training centers (TZ) and Children and Youth Sports Schools (KJS) in East Germany, as well as the services of full-time coaches and trainers. Other sports were allocated to Sport II. The sports in Sport II were thus denied the full range of advantages and privileges of the East German elite sports system. Football was allocated to Sport I, together with sports such as swimming, athletics and weightlifting. Sports such as tennis, water polo and basketball were instead allocated to Sports II. The allocation of football to Sport I owed much to the backing of the Head of the Stasi Erich Mielke and other top SED politicians, who were aware of the popularity of football in East Germany.
The 1969 Competitive Sports Resolution was then complemented by the 1970 DFV Football Resolution (). Among the main points of the 1970 DFV Football Resolution were the further separation of the football clubs from their sponsors, a more rigorous implementation of centrally conceived and monitored training plans based on the latest scientific findings from other sports and the further concentration of top-class football in a number of specially promoted focus clubs. 1970 DFV Football Resolution also gave sports officials of the DTSB and the DFV the unrestricted opportunity to delegate individual football players to clubs or to transfer them within clubs. The football clubs were now placed directly under the jurisdiction of the DTSB and the DFV. They would also be directly financed by the DTSB and would have to adhere to its financial regulations.Kummer 2010, pp. 223–224 The East German Ministry of Finance would release additional financing to fulfil the reform.
The 1970 DFV Football Resolution also aimed to root out the system of unauthorized financial incentives and bonuses to players that had developed. Other points of the 1970 DFV Football Resolution were a reduction of salaries, introduction of uniform salary and bonus payments, payments according to professional qualification within a certain framework, as well as the prohibition of additional financial incentives. Players in football clubs would now be able to train as de facto professionals. Players in enterprise sports communities (, BSG), on the other hand, were expected to work morning shifts and only be paid according occupational qualifications. The players in the football clubs were nominally employees of their sponsors. There were officially no professional players in East Germany until the late 1980s. Players were paid through their sponsors and the enterprises were then compensated by the DTSB for the release of players for trainings and matches. However, players in football clubs would in reality not be required to attend their workplaces. Of the additional 7 million Marks released by the East Germany Ministry of Finance for the 1970 DFV Football Resolution, 2 million Marks were provided to compensate the enterprises.