West German game association
The West German Game Association (WSV) was the regional football and athletics association initially for the west of the former German Empire . It was founded under the name Rheinischer Spiel-Verband (RSV) on October 23, 1898 in Düsseldorf in order to make regular and national gaming operations possible. On November 21, 1900, the RSV was renamed the Rheinisch-Westfälischer Spiel-Verband (RWSV), and on May 12, 1907 it was finally renamed the Westdeutscher Spiel-Verband . Although the association initially referred to the Rhineland and Westphalia, it spread as a result mainly to the east, so it that at the time of the resolution as part of the DC circuit by the Nazis to the Harz (Osterode), according Göttingen and to the Gau Hessen-Hannover, and in the south to Fulda.
history
In April 1898 the games department of Duisburger TV organized a game festival with several sports. Here the participating clubs discussed merging to form an association. With this appeal, the Rheinische Spiel-Verband was finally formed on October 23, 1898 . The nine founding associations were:
- Bonn TV 1860
- Cologne TV 1843
- Dortmund FC 1895
- Duisburg TV 1848
- Gymnastics Society Düren
- Düsseldorf gymnastics club from 1847
- Hochfelder Gymnastics Federation
- FC Munich-Gladbach
- Rheydter TV
This new association had neither a statute nor a board of directors (this was only determined on the association day on June 19, 1900). Munich-Gladbach was commissioned as a suburb to implement the resolutions that were passed. They didn't just want to play football, they wanted to promote physical exercise and the popular and youth games in the open air . From May 13th to 15th, 1899, the association's first games and sports festival took place in Munich-Gladbach. 91 game departments took part and 10,000 spectators were in attendance. The first board members were FA Schmidt (Bonn), Friedrich (Solingen) and HC Heesch (Munich-Gladbach). From November 1900, the journal Körper und Geist appeared as an association organ .
While championships have already been held in the cities of Berlin, Hamburg / Altona, Leipzig as well as in the neighboring Netherlands and Belgium, developments in the supra-regional associations - just under a year before the RSV, the VSFV was established in southern Germany - was comparatively slow in the first few years and dragging. It was not until the 1902/03 season that three districts were formed in the RWSV and the league game began. District I comprised the cities of Cöln / Bonn, District II Düsseldorf / Munich-Gladbach / Crefeld / Solingen / Velbert and District III Essen / Duisburg / Gelsenkirchen / Dortmund / Bottrop. The game was played in three classes, in the first class the Cölner FC won the first West German championship in 1899.
At the Düsseldorf Association Day in 1902, entry into the DFB was rejected by the majority of the 23 clubs present (out of a total of 35). Under the leadership of the later DFB chairman Gottfried Hinze , a group of 11 (out of a total of 45) clubs joined the DFB in 1904, including Cölner BC , Cölner FC 1899 , Duisburger SpV , Prussia Duisburg , Bonner FV and Düsseldorfer FC . In 1905 the entire Rheinisch-Westfälischer Spiel-Verband joined.
With an increasing number of member associations, the number of districts was expanded in the following years. In 1906 the Cassel clubs joined the RWSV, which had previously been a member of the North German Football Association. After clubs from the Osnabrück, Gießen, Marburg, Wetzlar and Dillenburg area had joined, the RWSV was renamed the West German Game Association (WSV) on May 12, 1907 . The association area finally included what is now the state of North Rhine-Westphalia , the greater Osnabrück area to the Dutch border, the Göttingen area, the Cassel area, Fulda, Central Hesse and the Coblenz area. In the meantime there were also member associations from today's Saarland and from other parts of the Rhineland. In the course of the final determination of the regional association boundaries, these clubs were added to the Association of South German Football Associations .
Only a few years after the championship games began in the west, the staging of point games was repeatedly brought up for discussion. Critics called for the abolition of the championship games because they were supposedly too hard, as well as the return to the friendlies of the early years. For the 1909/10 season, the WSV led the league class as the highest division for its association area. Nevertheless, the champions of the league class had to contest a final for the West German championship against the champions of the local A1 classes determined in a round of elimination. After only four years, the league class was abolished, which meant a clear sporting step backwards.
Until the introduction of the Gauligen in 1933, there were constant reforms of the game classes. The extension of the season over two years in the seasons 1922/24 and 1924/26 was a unique extreme case in German football. In the course of the " synchronization " of the sports organization by the National Socialists, the regional associations of the DFB were dissolved, and games are now centrally organized in 16 sports districts across Germany. The WSV "survived" this step a few months longer than the six other regional football associations, and under the name "Gauverband West" it was initially responsible for Gaue 9 (Westphalia), 10 (Lower Rhine) and 11 (Middle Rhine) until spring . Its last chairman, NSDAP member Josef Klein , then tried to delay the liquidation of the association and only bowed to political pressure from the Ministry of the Interior in the spring of 1935.
Master of the West German Game Association
West German Association Cup
From 1931 the West German Association Cup was held, and all clubs in the West German game association were eligible to participate. The cup was initially held in various regional districts. Clubs in the lower leagues (Gau classes and 2nd district classes) played the preliminary rounds first. The winners were qualified with the participants from the 1st district class and the district league for the intermediate round, in which the participant in the national cup final was determined. The cup winner qualified for the final round of the German soccer championship .
| year | West German cup winner |
Final result | Cup finalist |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1931/32 | VfL 06 Benrath | 3: 2 (3: 1) | Rheydter Spielverein |
| 1932/33 | VfL 06 Benrath | 3: 1 (0: 0) | Black and white food |
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hardy Greens : Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 1: From the Crown Prince to the Bundesliga. 1890 to 1963. German championship, Gauliga, Oberliga. Numbers, pictures, stories. Agon-Sportverlag, Kassel 1996, ISBN 3-928562-85-1 .
- ↑ Arnd Krüger : Today Germany belongs to us and tomorrow ...? The struggle for the sense of conformity in sport in the first half of 1933. In: Wolfgang Buss , Arnd Krüger (Hrsg.): Sport history: maintaining tradition and changing values. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Henze. (= Series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History , Vol. 2). Mecke, Duderstadt 1985, pp. 175-196.
literature
- Kölner Ballspielclub (Hrsg.): Westdeutscher Spielverband: Festschrift to commemorate the celebration of the 10th anniversary . Hoursch & Bechstedt, Cologne 1908.
- Markus Fiesseler: 100 years of football in North Rhine-Westphalia . AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1997, ISBN 3-89609-156-5 .
- German Sports Club for Football Statistics (Ed.): Football in West Germany 1902/03 - 1932/33 . 2009, DNB 997617357 .
- History of German football. Volume III of the series of publications of the German Football Association. Carl Koppehel, Verlag Wilhelm Limpert, Frankfurt 1954, 4th expanded edition without a year.