GDR Oberliga (Badminton)
The league was the highest division in badminton in the GDR and determined the GDR team champions . Over the years it has been renamed several times, so it was sometimes referred to as the Association League , Oberliga A and for a longer period of time as the Special League . In particular, the name Sonderliga reflected the special conditions in badminton, referred to exclusively as shuttlecock in the GDR, in eastern Germany: only in this league was it possible to play with natural shuttlecocks due to the lack of foreign currency for republic-wide cover - and often only with cheap brands such as Pioneer, rarely with high quality brands like Reinforced Shuttlecocks Limited (RSL). The rest was covered with plastic balls (for a long time balls of the "Schwalbe" brand) from our own production, which were always of significantly inferior quality than real shuttlecocks or comparable plastic balls from western manufacturers such as. B. from Carlton Sports .
In 1960 the first GDR team championship took place, but not yet in the form of a league, but as a final round with participants determined in regional preliminary rounds. The first master became an activist Tröbitz on April 18, 1960 . The first league season started the next year. For activist Tröbitz it was only enough for 2nd place this time, the post office Berlin representative was champion . The Tröbitzer , however, held themselves harmless in the next ten years: All titles went to the village in Niederlausitz . Unity Greifswald was even more diligent in the following two decades : From 1972 until the end of the GDR, the team won all other team titles.
The Oberliga followed as the second highest division since the 1961/1962 season, the district league . From the 1967/1968 season, the GDR league was the second highest division in the district league with four regional seasons. From 1970/1971 the Oberliga B existed between the GDR Oberliga and the GDR League.
The winners and those placed
credentials
- Martin Knupp: Deutscher Badminton Almanach , self-published (2003), 230 pages
- René Born: 1957–1997. 40 years of badminton in Tröbitz - The history of BV Tröbitz eV , self-published (1997), 84 pages. ( Online version )
- René Born: Badminton in Tröbitz (Part 1 - The beginnings, the medal winners, the statistics) , self-published (2007), 455 pages ( online version )