The 1941 German football championship, the 34th edition of the competition, was won by SK Rapid Wien, the club's sole German championship. Rapid, which had previously won twelve Austrian football championships between 1911 and 1938 as well as the 1938 German Cup, won the competition by defeating Schalke 04 4–3 in the final.(West) Germany -List of champions rsssf.org, accessed: 26 December 2015FC Schalke 04 » Steckbrief Weltfussball.de – FC Schalke 04 honours, accessed: 26 December 2015Rapid Wien » Steckbrief Weltfussball.de – Rapid Wien honours, accessed: 26 December 2015 The final was held on 22 June 1941, the same day Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.Der längste Tag – das Protokoll des Überfalls Die Welt, published: 22 June 2011, accessed: 26 December 2015
Overview
FC Schalke 04, having won five of the previous seven finals, being the defending champions and aiming for an unprecedented third consecutive German championship, were the favourites and led the final 3–0 after 57 minutes but Rapid scored four unanswered goals, the last three of them by Franz Binder, to win the championship.Deutsche Meisterschaft 1940/1941 » Finale » Rapid Wien – FC Schalke 04 4:3 Weltfussball.de, Game report, accessed: 26 December 2015 It marked the second of three occasions of a club from Vienna (German: Wien) in the final, Rapid becoming the only one to win the competition while Admira Wien had made a losing appearance in the 1939 final and First Vienna FC would do the same in 1942. Austrian clubs had played in the German league system from 1938, after the Anschluss, until the German surrender in 1945.Die deutsche Vergangenheit von Rapid Wien sportal.de, The German history of Rapid Wien, accessed: 26 December 2015
Rapid's victory led to a number of conspiracy theories. On Schalke's side it was speculated that Rapid was allowed to win to award a national championship to a club from the Ostmark while, in Austria, the theory developed that Rapid players were punished after the final by being sent to the front line. Both theories were disproven when Rapid, in 2009, commissioned a study into the history of the club during the Nazi era and found no evidence for either.Deutscher Meister: Rapid 1, Leverkusen 0 Kurier, published: 25 December 2012, accessed: 26 December 2015 Rapid continues to list both German titles, the 1941 championship and the 1938 cup win, in its honours.Erfolge Rapid Wien website – honours, accessed: 27 December 2015
Schalke's Hermann Eppenhoff became the top scorer of the 1941 championship with 15 goals, the highest individual amount for any player in the history of the competition from 1903 to 1963.
The twenty 1940–41 Gauliga champions, two more than in 1940 because of the addition of the Gauliga Elsaß and Gauliga Danzig-Westpreußen,kicker Allmanach 1990, page: 243-245 competed in a group stage with the four group winners advancing to the semi-finals. The two semi-final winners then contested the 1941 championship final. The groups were divided into two with four clubs and two with six clubs with the latter, in turn, subdivided into two groups of three teams each and a final of these group winners to determine the overall group champions.German championship 1941 rsssf.org, accessed: 26 December 2015
In the following season, the German championship was played with twenty five clubs. From there it gradually expanded further through a combination of territorial expansion of Nazi Germany and the sub-dividing of the Gauligas in later years, reaching a strength of thirty-one in its last completed season, 1943–44.
Qualified teams The teams qualified through the 1940–41 Gauliga season: Club Qualified from VfL Neckarau Gauliga Baden TSV 1860 München Gauliga Bayern Tennis Borussia Berlin Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg Preußen Danzig Gauliga Danzig-Westpreußen FC Mühlhausen 93 Gauliga Elsaß Borussia Fulda Gauliga Hessen SV Jena Gauliga Mitte VfL 99 Köln Gauliga Mittelrhein TuS Helene Altenessen Gauliga Niederrhein Hannover 96 Gauliga Niedersachsen Hamburger SV Gauliga Nordmark SK Rapid Wien Gauliga Ostmark VfB Königsberg Gauliga Ostpreußen LSV Stettin Gauliga Pommern Dresdner SC Gauliga Sachsen Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz Gauliga Schlesien NSTG Prag Gauliga SudetenlandKickers Offenbach Gauliga SüdwestSchalke 04 Gauliga WestfalenStuttgarter Kickers Gauliga Württemberg Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz replaced Germania Königshütte for the finals.
Competition
Group 1
Group 1A Group 1A was contested by the champions of the Gauligas Danzig-Westpreußen, Pommern and Schlesien:
Group 1B Group 1B was contested by the champions of the Gauligas Brandenburg, Sachsen and Sudetenland:
Group 1 final
Group 2
Group 2A Group 2A was contested by the champions of the Gauligas Mitte, Nordmark and Ostpreußen:
Group 2B Group 2B was contested by the champions of the Gauligas Hessen, Niedersachsen and Westfalen:
Group 2 final
Group 3 Group 3 was contested by the champions of the Gauligas Elsaß, Mittelrhein, Niederrhein and Südwest:
Group 4 Group 4 was contested by the champions of the Gauligas Bayern, Baden, Ostmark and Württemberg:
Semi-finals Three of the four clubs in the 1941 semi-finals had reached the same stage in the previous season, Rapid Wien, Dresdner SC and FC Schalke 04, while VfL Köln 99 replaced SV Waldhof Mannheim in comparison to 1940:German championship 1940 rsssf.org, accessed: 27 December 2015
|align="center" style="background:#ddffdd" colspan=3|8 June 1941German championship 1941 – Semifinals Weltfussball.de, accessed: 26 December 2015
Third place play-off
|align="center" style="background:#ddffdd" colspan=3|22 June 1941German championship 1941 – Third place game Weltfussball.de, accessed: 26 December 2015
Final
SPORTKLUB RAPID: GK Rudolf Raftl DF Stefan Wagner DF Heribert Sperner MF Franz Wagner MF Leopold Gernhardt MF Stefan Skoumal FW Willy Fitz FW Georg Schors FW Franz Binder FW Hermann Dvoracek FW Hans PesserManager: Leopold NitschFC GELSENKIRCHEN-SCHALKE 04: GK Hans Klodt DF Hans Bornemann DF Otto Schweisfurth MF Bernhard Füller MF Otto Tibulski MF Rudolf Gellesch FW Herbert Burdenski FW Fritz Szepan FW Hermann Eppenhoff FW Ernst Kuzorra FW Heinz HinzManager: Otto Faist
References
Sources kicker Allmanach 1990, by kicker, page 164 & 177 – German championship
External links German Championship 1940–41 at weltfussball.de German Championship 1941 at RSSSF News broadcast from 22 June 1941 with footage of the final Die Deutsche Wochenschau