Game operations have so far hardly been affected by the war events; an image that was intensively promoted by the National Socialist government in order to convey normalcy in everyday war life. For the new football season, a new language regulation was ordered, the football districts were now called "sports areas", the name league, which was taken over from war opponent England, was replaced by "class".
In the “sports areas”, after the previous year, they mostly returned to single-tier classes. There were changes, however, due to the war-related annexations of the German Empire; With Alsace , Danzig-West Prussia (Danzig was separated from the previous East Prussian sports area), Wartheland and the Generalgouvernement , a total of four new sports areas were set up. In the general government area, however, the championship was not ended, so that on April 6, 1941, 21 sports field champions played for the German championship . The number of participants was reduced to 20 through a so-called Ostland qualification, in which the champions from Danzig-West Prussia and the Wartheland met. For the two additional participants, a second group of six with two subgroups and a group final was introduced in the preliminary round.
With the SK Rapid Wien , German cup winners as early as 1938, an Austrian team became German champions , once in the history of the German soccer championship. The Viennese won the final after a 3-0 deficit against FC Schalke 04 4-3 . This missed it to overtake 1. FC Nürnberg in the number of championship titles in his fifth participation in the finals .
Rapid Wien went into the final with the intention of restoring Vienna's football theory and referred to the shameful 9-0 defeat of Admira Wien against Schalke in the 1939 final. However, Schalke went into the 1941 final as the clear favorite. This role was they did justice immediately and already led after 7 minutes with goals from Heinz Hinz and Hermann Eppenhoff 2-0. The Viennese Franz Binder missed the next goal when he could not convert a penalty. The West Germans already looked like the sure winner at halftime, and Hinz reinforced this assumption with his second goal twelve minutes after the restart. But then the game changed. The Viennese gave up their hitherto unsuccessful play of beauty and began to fight. Three minutes after the 0: 3, Vienna's half right Schors scored the first goal for Rapid after a long input, which was followed almost every minute by two more goals from center forward Binder to equalize 3: 3. The fact that after his missed penalty in the first half (41st) speaks for the strong nerves of Binder, he did not shy away from playing again as a penalty taker in the 63rd minute, this time to convert safely to equalize. Seven minutes later, referee Adolf Reinhardt decided on a free kick after Schalke Otto Tibulsky had brought down his opponent Fritz. Again, Binder acted as enforcer and after a short run-up shot the ball unsustainable to 4: 3 for Rapid. In the remaining twenty minutes, Schalke overran the opposing goal non-stop, but in vain. The Schalke 04 players then showed themselves to be bad losers and saw themselves cheated by the referee. Captain Ernst Kuzorra refused to accept the badge of honor for the runner-up. However, the experts took the view that Schalke failed because of his own victory and referred to the numerous goalkeeping mistakes made by Schalke Hans Klodt .
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Hermann Eppenhoff (15 goals)
SK Rapid Vienna - FC Schalke 04
