VfB-Einheit zu Pankow
Encyclopedia
VfB Einheit zu Pankow is a German association football club
Football in Germany
Association football is the most popular sport in Germany. The German Football Association is the sport's national governing body, with 6.6 million members organized in over 26,000 football clubs. There is a league system, with the 1. and 2. Bundesliga on top, and the winner of the first...

 from the Pankow
Pankow
Pankow is the third borough of Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow.- Overview :...

 district of Berlin.

History

Founded in 1893 as VfB Pankow, the club's initial interests were in cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 and tennis. Within a few years English expatriates introduced football, which soon displaced cricket. The club grew quickly and came to include departments for gymnastics, fencing
Fencing
Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...

, and cycling
Cycling
Cycling, also called bicycling or biking, is the use of bicycles for transport, recreation, or for sport. Persons engaged in cycling are cyclists or bicyclists...

.

The football team played in the early Berlin-based leagues and became one of the founding members
Founding Clubs of the DFB
The DFB was formed January 28, 1900 in Leipzig. The commonly accepted number of founding clubs represented at the inaugural meeting is 86, but this number is uncertain. The vote held to establish the association was 62:22 in favour . Some delegates present represented more than one club, but may...

 of the German Football Association
German Football Association
The German Football Association is the governing body of football in Germany. A founding member of both FIFA and UEFA, the DFB organises the German football leagues, including the national league, the Bundesliga, and the men's and women's national teams. The DFB is based in Frankfurt and is...

 (Deutscher Fussball Bund or German Football Association) at Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 in 1900.

VfB played as a lower table side in the Verbandsliga Berlin-Brandenburg (later the Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg) through the late 10's and into the early 20's until touched by scandal in the 1924–25 season. Although they finished just clear of relegation on goal difference they were forced into a two game relegation playoff because the team had come under suspicion of manipulating some of its matches. They lost both contests to Preußen Berlin
BFC Preussen
BFC Preussen is a German football club from Berlin. The team is part of a sports club which also has departments for handball, volleyball, athletics, gymnastics, and ice hockey...

(0:6, 0:1) and dropped out of top-flight play for a number of years.

Pankow was able to play their way back to premier level football in 1930 and in 1933 earned their best result with a second place finish in the Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg, Staffel B. The next season German football was reorganized under the Third Reich in to sixteen top flight Gauligen and the club joined the Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg
Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg
The Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg was the highest football league in the provinces of Brandenburg and Berlin in the German state of Prussia from 1933 to 1945...

 where they continued to deliver poor finishes until relegated again in 1936.

After the end of World War II in 1945 occupying Allied forces ordered most organizations in Germany disbanded, including sports and football clubs. Late in the year the establishment of new clubs was permitted and VfB was re-created as SG Pankow Nord. The club was later the first side to be permitted play under its original name. In 1947 they re-appeared in the Oberliga Berlin (I) but were soon caught up in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 politics of post-war Germany. By the end of the 1950 season they were forced out of the Oberliga and into the DDR-Oberliga, the first division league established in the Soviet-occupied part of the country.

In 1951 most of the club's membership fled to the western-occupied zones of the city and set up there – what was left of VfB in the east was re-named Einheit Pankow. The crippled side then crashed to a last place finish in the 1951–52 season, establishing a record of futility nearly as ignominious the one that would be set by Tasmania Berlin
Tasmania 1900 Berlin
SC Tasmania 1900 Berlin was a German association football club based in the Berlin district of Neukölln.- Tasmania 1900 :The team was founded on 2 June 1900 as Rixdorfer TuFC Tasmania 1900, changing its name when Rixdorf was re-named Neukölln in 1912...

 in their 1965 Bundesliga appearance:
  • In 34 matches Einheit earned just two victories and three ties (7:61), losing all of its away games.
  • The club was outscored 29:131 and went through a stretch of 588 minutes without a goal.
  • Of thirteen league matches which drew fewer than 2,000 spectators, ten were hosted by Pankow.


Incredibly, the team made an appearance in the final of the FDGB Pokal
FDGB Pokal
The FDGB-Pokal was an elimination football tournament held annually in the former East Germany. It was the second most important national title in East German football after the DDR-Oberliga championship...

 (East German Cup) that same disastrous season. Aided by manipulative sports officials who – looking to ensure the presence of a Berlin-based team in the final – overturned the result of a cup semi-final match which they had actually lost, Einheit advanced to the final against SG Volkspolizei Dresden
Dynamo Dresden
SG Dynamo Dresden are a German association football club, based in Dresden, Saxony. They were founded in 1950, as a club affiliated with the East German police, and became one of the most popular and successful clubs in East German football, winning eight league titles...

where they were beaten 0:3.

Einheit was relegated to the DDR-Liga
DDR-Liga
The DDR-Liga was, prior to German reunification in 1990, the second level of football competition in the DDR , being roughly equivalent to the Bundesliga in West Germany.-1950-1955:The league was established with two divisions of ten teams each in 1950...

(II) where they struggled through two more seasons before being sent further down. The club would manage only three more single season appearances in the second division through the early-to-mid 70's, spending the rest of its time in lower tier football.

A year after German re-unification in 1990, the eastern and western sides which had split 40 years earlier came together again as the current club VfB Einheit zu Pankow which plays today in the Landesliga Berlin (VI).

External links

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