Akte Union Berlin

Profile — Facts, Figures and Milestones

1. FC Union Berlin (officially: 1. Fußballclub Union Berlin e. V.) is a football club based in Berlin-Köpenick. Its founding history is complicated. In 1906, in Luisenstraße (today's Plönzeile), ball boys and friends of the local club Excelsior gathered in a sandpit behind the Oberschöneweide school and founded the football club Olympia. The club dissolved shortly after, but some football enthusiasts from the same circle soon formed a new club, modelled on the neighbouring Lichtenberger S.C. Frisch Auf. Excelsior split into Preußen and Vorwärts, but neither offshoot lasted long.

Ultimately, members of all three clubs came together and on June 17, 1906, founded Olympia Oberschöneweide at the "Großkopf" tavern in Luisenstraße 17. The team initially consisted almost entirely of schoolboys and joined BTuFC Helgoland 1897 as a youth team barely a month later. The club was not very successful, so the Oberschöneweide players decided to switch again just six months later. This time they attached themselves to the 1905 German Football Champions — BTuFC Union 1892. There the team played for two years — albeit only as the fourth team. In the 1907/08 season, they achieved their first modest success by winning the championship of the lowest division of the Berlin Ball Sports Association (VBB). In February 1909, the team separated from BTuFC. They wanted to stand on their own feet. Out of gratitude and loyalty, they adopted both the name (henceforth calling themselves Union Oberschöneweide, later with the prefix SC) and the club colours blue and white.

Three years later, in the 1909/10 season, the Berliners first competed as an independent club in the VBB — quite successfully. After three promotions in five years, the club played in Berlin and Brandenburg's top division from 1914. In the new league of the Brandenburg Ball Sports Association, Union even became runners-up in 1917.

The team played for nearly ten years at a sports ground on Wattstraße in Oberschöneweide, until the 1920 move to the Sadowa sports complex — today's Stadion An der Alten Försterei — in the Wuhlheide forest. For the official opening ceremony on August 7, 1920, the reigning German champions 1. FC Nürnberg visited. In 1920, Union became Berlin champions for the first time and qualified for the German championship final round. They reached the quarter-finals and narrowly lost 2-3 to Vereinigte Breslauer Sportfreunde. In 1923, the club became Berlin champions again and, after victories over Arminia Bielefeld and SpVgg Fürth, made it all the way to the championship final. At the Grunewald Stadium in Berlin, Union lost their "home match" 0-3 against Hamburger SV in front of 64,000 spectators. The early heyday of "Union-Ob." — as fans called the club — came to an end.

"Eisern Union" has been around for quite some time: Union Berlin enjoys cult status far beyond the football scene and the city limits of Berlin. Like hardly any other club from the former GDR, Union cultivates the image of a "workers' club" — with a lovably eccentric aura and a dash of Ostalgie. The battle cry of Union Berlin fans, like the title of the club anthem sung by Nina Hagen, is "Eisern Union" ("Iron Union"). That much is widely known. Less well known is that the battle cry is almost 100 years old, dating back to the 1920s or 1930s. Many fans and players of the predecessor club SC Union Oberschöneweide worked in industrial plants in the Berlin district of Oberschöneweide after the First World War. Since the early 20th century, this had been an industrial cluster of up to 25 large enterprises and a multitude of small workshops and laboratories — primarily in the electrical, metalworking and mechanical engineering industries. The Oberspree power station was the first major power plant outside Berlin and the first three-phase power plant in the German Reich — a pioneer of modern electricity generation, as it was the first to feed electrical energy into a supply grid. During the First World War, Oberschöneweide became a key centre of the armaments industry. The high number of workers turned the district into a centre of the working class. The labour in those industrial plants was typically extremely hard and physically demanding, requiring an iron will and endurance to survive. A martial, metallic battle cry reflecting the industrial flair was therefore a natural fit for supporting the local football club — especially as Union apparently already cultivated a particularly athletic style of play at the time, the very opposite of the Schalke Spinning Top or the Viennese School. Urban legend has it that the battle cry was first heard during a match against Hertha BSC, when a draw against the clearly superior Herthaner threatened to slip away. According to other sources, the cry goes back to the nickname "Schlosserjungs" ("locksmith lads"). That's what the Union players were called because of their blue kit and their working-class origins before 1933.

Apolitical proletarians, hippies, hooligans and assorted "ideological misfits" sing anarchic songs: During the GDR era, apolitical proles, hippies, hooligans and assorted "ideological misfits" flocked to Union. The club was a counter-model to the two other Berlin clubs — BFC Dynamo Berlin and the initially GDR-football-dominating and later to Frankfurt/Oder-relocated ASK Vorwärts Berlin (FC Vorwärts from 1966). Union fans sang songs like: "Better to be a loser than a stupid Stasi pig." That is also known in the West. What is less well known? The anarchic mix of underdog feeling and defiance towards any form of state authority still shapes the Union fan scene today. A classic Union chant that emerged in the early 2000s and is still sung with gusto documents this: "Father died in prison / Mother lies deathly ill in bed / Sister became a whore / What am I to do alone in this world / Union, Union above all else / Germany's most immortal team / For Union will never fall apart / Iron Union from Berlin."

Union vs. BFC Dynamo, Tennis Borussia and Hertha BSC: The fan scene of Union Berlin has maintained fierce and well-known rivalries within Berlin, particularly with the "Stasi club" BFC Dynamo and, in the 1990s, with the "class enemy" Tennis Borussia Berlin from Charlottenburg. Less well known are individual details of the hostility and a very special relationship with a third club — Hertha BSC. For many old-school Union fans, the main enemy still stands in the east. Even though BFC Dynamo and Union Berlin have long since ceased to meet at eye level. Dynamo kicked around in the Regionalliga in 2019/20 while Union played in the Bundesliga. In GDR times, things were very different, and BFC Dynamo regularly thrashed the Köpenickers. What few people know today: between 1976 and 1989, there were no home derbies between Dynamo and Union. For "security reasons," all local derbies took place at the Stadion der Weltjugend in the city centre on neutral ground. The exception was the cup quarter-final Union vs. BFC in December 1988. But even that didn't help the Köpenickers. They lost 0-2 in front of 20,000 fans at the Alte Försterei.

After reunification, Tennis Borussia became the new hate object: The Köpenickers maintained an irreconcilable enmity with the club from Charlottenburg, once run or supported by TV presenter Hans Rosenthal and music producer Jack White. What few know: one of TeBe's most flamboyant players provided a particularly provocative moment. Ansgar Brinkmann, the former Osnabrücker, dared to enter the Alte Försterei stadium during the first relegation match in May 2000 between Union and VfL Osnabrück, was abused and threatened with a beating. "What's he doing here, we're a workers' club" was about the mildest reaction towards "Drinkmann."

If you have football enemies in the city, you also need some friends: Quite unknown is the fact that during the Wall years, fans of Hertha BSC and Union Berlin harboured considerable sympathies for each other. And they expressed it, as Berlin landlubbers with waterfront access — one lot in the far west, the other in the far east of the city — as follows: "We stick together like the wind and the sea — the blue-and-white Hertha and FC Union." Urban legend has it that cult Hertha fan Pepe Mager even sewed his own patches documenting the friendship between both teams during the Wall era. Since then, the sympathy between Hertha and Union fans has turned to antipathy. The reason? The top-dog syndrome, the Highlander attitude! There can be only one! Tennis Borussia and BFC Dynamo have long ceased to be rivals at eye level for Union Berlin. Rather footballing prey. But Hertha BSC presents itself as the perfect antithesis to "Die Eisernen." The two Berlin Bundesliga clubs could hardly be more different. Hertha BSC, with Lars Windhorst as investor and Jürgen Klinsmann — who fled Berlin again ad hoc in February 2020 — on the supervisory board (and as coach for 76 days…), desperately wants to be seen as a metropolis club and the number one capital-city club of the largest country in the European Union. Union positions itself as an ambitious neighbourhood club from the east with heart, warmth and soul. Successfully: Hertha had more members as of November 2019 (37,000) but not as many fans in the east of the city (though somewhat more in Brandenburg). Union is growing much faster and, with more than 32,000 members, has only about 15% fewer members than Hertha BSC. On top of that, the club develops cult potential similar to FC St. Pauli — in its own unique way and not limited to eastern Germany. Union stands more for a kind of new-old Berlin, while Hertha BSC keeps being associated with the very old West Berlin (You are leaving the functioning sector of Germany). With nonsensical spending, below-average management abilities and misplaced hubris — precisely what Jürgen Klinsmann recorded in his 22-page "diary" in 2019/2020 after quitting Hertha BSC…

Heaviest competitive defeat: 1. FC Union Berlin's heaviest competitive defeat after German reunification in 1990 came on October 7, 2002 in the 2. Bundesliga — 0-7 at 1. FC Köln.

2-8 in Zwickau: A 2-8 from Union's perspective occurred in the 2. Bundesliga promotion round in 1992 at old DDR-Oberliga rivals FSV Zwickau.

0-5 against Werder Bremen: In the DFB-Pokal, eventual finalists Werder Bremen humiliated "Die Eisernen" 5-0 at the Alte Försterei on August 2, 2009.

Beatings from the Stasi club: Since the "Eisernen" were promoted in 1966, BFC Dynamo regularly dished out beatings to the Köpenickers in the DDR-Oberliga. In 1979/80, the Dynamos hammered Union 6-0; in 1986/87, even 8-1. In the FDGB-Pokal round of 16 in 1978/79, Union were thrashed both in the first leg (1-8) and the second leg (1-7).

The Unpromoteables: Union Berlin in the 2. Bundesliga promotion round — an unsolvable riddle! From 1992 onwards, the Unionists regularly missed out on promotion to Germany's "football basement." In 1992, it was five defeats in six matches against VfL Wolfsburg, FC Berlin (as BFC was temporarily named) and FSV Zwickau, with a goal difference of minus 15. In 1993, the Köpenickers were denied their second-division licence. Things turned dramatic in the summer of 2000. In a penalty shootout thriller in the relegation second leg at VfL Osnabrück (7-8) and the subsequent three-way playoff with LR Ahlen and SC Pfullendorf, the dream of the 2. Bundesliga remained unfulfilled once again.

Union Berlin's greatest achievements of the 21st century (as of December 2019) are the promotion to the Bundesliga in 2019 and reaching the DFB-Pokal final in 2001 in their own city.

The 2019 relegation playoff: By winning the 2019 relegation playoff against 16th-placed VfB Stuttgart, Union Berlin reached the German top flight for the first time and unleashed sheer pandemonium in the Wuhlheide. Remarkably, the club reached the Bundesliga in May 2019 with three consecutive draws. First, Urs Fischer's team came back from 0-2 down in Bochum. The 2-2 took them into the relegation playoff against VfB Stuttgart. With a 2-2 in Stuttgart and a 0-0 in Berlin, "Die Eisernen" made their fans' dream come true — and went up.

The year 2001: 2001 was, up to that point, the greatest year for 1. FC Union Berlin. The club was promoted to the 2. Bundesliga for the first time and, still a third-division side, reached the DFB-Pokal final in their own city against FC Schalke 04. Despite the 0-2 defeat to the Royal Blues, Union as cup finalists were finally eligible for the European Cup.

UEFA Cup: In the UEFA Cup, Georgi Vassilev's team beat the Finnish club Haka Valkeakoski 3-0 in the second leg. The first leg in the Finnish small town ended 1-1. The second leg on September 27, 2001 had a special twist — it had to be played at the Jahn-Stadion of arch-rivals BFC Dynamo, as the Alte Försterei was not approved for international matches.

Intercup winners 1985: Further international successes are thin on the ground. Most notably, in 1985 Union won the Intercup in a group with Bayer Uerdingen, Standard Liège and Lausanne Sports.

Reinhard Lauck — Alcohol: The most famous wanderer between the worlds of Union and BFC Dynamo is the former GDR national defender Reinhard Lauck. In 1974, in the GDR's sensational 1-0 win over the eventual World Champions West Germany, Lauck reduced Wolfgang Overath and Günter Netzer to bit-part players. Two years later, he became an Olympic champion in Montreal. Twenty-one years after that, Lauck died from the consequences of his alcoholism. His tragedy was poignantly told by Alexander Osang in his reportage "Ick bin doch Mäcki, kennste ma nich?" ("I'm Mäcki, don't you know me?").

Günter "Jimmy" Hoge — Anything but conformist: Günter "Jimmy" Hoge was Union Berlin's first GDR international. From 1958 to 1962, he played for ASK Vorwärts Berlin, then moved to BSG Motor Köpenick (1962–1964) and TSC Berlin (1964–1966). From 1966 to 1970, he made 77 competitive appearances for 1. FC Union Berlin, scoring five goals for the Köpenickers and becoming a crowd favourite. Hoge ended his footballing career at BSG Motor Hennigsdorf (1970–1973) and later at IHB Berlin and Motor Friedrichshain. The 5'7" striker was capped six times for the GDR national team between 1961 and 1968. His first international came as a left winger on June 21, 1961 in a friendly against Morocco (1-2). After the subsequent World Cup qualifier against Hungary — which the GDR lost 3-2 — Hoge vanished from the squad for six years, despite being widely admired for his sporting ability. In terms of ball control, dribbling and speed, Hoge was one of the finest GDR players of the 1960s. But "Jimmy" was also a headstrong, non-conformist character who rubbed coaches and officials the wrong way and regularly fell out of favour. In July 1962, he was "demoted" to the lower-division GDR league side BSG Motor Köpenick. His most successful phase came at Union Berlin. As a Union player, Hoge won his way back into the national team, earning four more caps up to his last international on February 2, 1968 against Czechoslovakia. Excellent performances on a South American tour earned him the nickname "motorneto" ("little motorbike") from the local press. Hoge was part of the Union team that won the 1968 FDGB-Pokal. After the cup triumph, it seemed as though the career of Jimmy, now nearly 28, was finally heading towards "GDR superstar" status — but it was already abruptly over. Due to so-called "disciplinary offences" (such as driving without a licence), Hoge was banned by the GDR Football Association "from all match and sporting activities from October 17, 1968 to May 31, 1969." The official ruling stated that Hoge had "repeatedly been under the influence of alcohol" and "grossly insulted his teammates." In official GDR-speak, the DFV declared that Hoge was not capable of "anchoring his behaviour within the framework of the collective and the customary life of our society."

In the 1969/70 season, it seemed as though the ban had not harmed Hoge further. He remained part of Union's first team and helped the club gain promotion to the Oberliga. But in the summer of 1970, the final blow came. Hoge received a professional ban — for singing a song. A very specific song. The Union team travelled to the Baltic Sea at the end of the season. "Party animal" Hoge met his former coach Schwenzfeier at a pub and, while drunk during a TV broadcast of a West German international, started singing the Deutschlandlied. The incident was reported to the Stasi, which reacted harshly and ensured that the GDR Football Association banned the then nearly 30-year-old player from competitive football: a six-year ban from the Oberliga (GDR's top division), a two-year ban from the DDR-Liga (second division) and a one-year ban from the Bezirksliga (third division). The football career of "Jimmy" Hoge — who had been an international just two years earlier — was over. At least at the top level. After reunification, things didn't go particularly well for Jimmy either. He was never good with money, nor with the professional mechanisms of the new era. Old companions repeatedly tried to help and give him stability, but with limited success. Since 2003, Hoge has been an honorary member of 1. FC Union Berlin. He died of cancer at the age of 77. Under different circumstances, Günter "Jimmy" Hoge could have become one of the greats of German football. He certainly had the talent.

Union Berlin and money! Since German reunification, Union Berlin has repeatedly struggled with financial problems. Once, a piece of fraud even cost them promotion, and at some point millions from the "Kinowelt" empire had to come to the rescue. But "Die Eisernen" could always rely on their loyal fans, even in the worst of times. Down to the last drop of blood…

The man with the money suitcase: In January 1998, Union gained a prominent supporter. Karlsruhe-based media entrepreneur Dr. Michael Kölmel ("Kinowelt") had made it his mission to help financially stricken traditional clubs. Generous or shrewd? That is in the eye of the beholder. In total, he invested 65 million euros in various football clubs — Union was his first patient. When he announced the financial restructuring alongside Union president Heiner Bertram, the Berlin club boss had tears in his eyes. Thanks to Kölmel ("You need a long breath in this business"), Union became debt-free, assigned its TV rights to Kölmel and initiated an image transformation. But had exactly what Nina Hagen denies in the club anthem ("Eisern Union") come to pass? "Who refuses to be bought by the West? — Eisern Union!" Or had they…?

"Bleeding for Union": Dr. Kölmel's financial windfall eventually dried up. When the club plummeted to the Oberliga in 2005, Kölmel had already received a suspended sentence for delay of insolvency proceedings… Union again faced ruin at the end of the 2003/04 season. With the blood donation campaign "Bleeding for Union" in May and June 2004, fans raised money and helped gather the 1.46 million euros needed for short-term survival. The rest was contributed by club chairman Zingler, Kölmel and other sponsors. The consolidation succeeded. Under new coach Christian Schreier, promotion back to the Regionalliga was achieved.

The forged bank guarantee: The biggest financial thriller involving the Köpenickers played out in the capital in 1993. Sportingly, Union Berlin had "finally" qualified for the 2. Bundesliga — 1-0 in the relegation match against Bischofswerdaer FV 08! It subsequently emerged that the bank guarantee required for licensing was forged. On July 2, 1993, the DFB awarded the second-division spot to the despised West Berlin rivals Tennis Borussia Berlin. As the Berliner Tagesspiegel later reported, an employee of Union's main sponsor allegedly tipped off TeBe's boss and hit producer Jack White (alias Horst Nußbaum). Jack White ("Heute haun' wir auf die Pauke") gratefully accepted the information. Nevertheless, it has never been definitively established who leaked this inside information to the DFB. DER SPIEGEL saw "a touch of Mielke" in July 1993 — an East Berlin football farce that Stasi boss Erich Mielke probably couldn't have staged any better: "The gentlemen of the football club Union Berlin find only short-lived comfort in the 27 verses that an 'anonymous folk poet' has nailed to the notice board at the offices in Köpenick. As in the best days of the peaceful revolution, the entire misery of the east is captured in doggerel: 'No matter how often our lads hit the net / the Wessis still do the deal!'" In any event: at the end of the 1993/94 season, Union Berlin were once again denied a second-division licence — the "lack of economic viability" hadn't changed. A debt mountain of 2.56 million euros made the DFB balk. The most valuable players, such as future World Cup runner-up Marko Rehmer and Bosnian Sergej Barbarez, had to be sold to avoid sinking even deeper into the red. Coach Frank Pagelsdorf left Berlin, joined Hansa Rostock — and won promotion to the Bundesliga with the Mecklenburg club…

Deep in trouble — The scandal professional: No other player has irked 1. FC Union more than Nico "Patsche" Patschinski. The native East Berliner apparently had a rather idiosyncratic relationship with money during his time at "Die Eisernen" from 2006, and possibly beyond. "What I do with my cash is my business. Whether I wipe my arse with it, gamble it or burn it. It's only money," he countered critics who had regarded him as a gambling addict since at least 2007. Patschinski, at 10,000 euros a month the top earner at Wuhlheide, wouldn't be Patschinski if he didn't play down the problem. "Union's sporting director Christian Beeck said in 2007 that I was addicted to gambling and sick, that I wasn't performing. By that point I'd already had myself banned from all casinos because I'd lost too much — but I wasn't a gambling addict then and I'm not now. I just played a bit of cards and placed some bets," he told the Berliner Kurier in March 2016. His participation in a charity poker tournament organised by hated East Berlin rivals BFC Dynamo earned him a formal warning and a 5,000-euro fine. Anti-Union slogans and a wild party night with Dynamo were enough for the club to dismiss Patschinski without notice for "conduct damaging to the club." When his contract was finally dissolved in July 2009 after lengthy wrangling and a severance payment of around 130,000 euros became due, Union president Dirk Zingler breathed a sigh of relief: "We're glad this chapter is closed."

The fact that 1. FC Union Berlin reached the 2001 DFB-Pokal final and that mascot "Ritter Keule" swings his morning star at every home game — that's fairly well known in German football. But there are plenty of lesser-known fun facts about "Die Eisernen."

The Christmas Carol Singing: It's a "Union classic" that has since been copied by numerous clubs. Semi-officially since 2003, officially since 2005, nearly 30,000 people gather at the Stadion An der Alten Försterei shortly before Christmas for the now-traditional Christmas carol singing — mulled wine included. Pastor Kastner, successor to Pastor Müller, tells the Christmas story, the choir of the Emmy-Noether-Gymnasium sets the key and tempo, and a small brass ensemble provides festive-cheerful sounds. Songbook and candle are provided free of charge — "a small donation towards the club's youth development is always welcome," the Union website notes.

Union Berlin's first European goalscorer is Sreto Ristic: The former Stuttgart player, who scored five goals in 47 Bundesliga appearances for VfB between 1996 and 2000, found the net on September 20, 2001 in the 1-1 draw at FC Haka in Finland. It paid off doubly for him, as he had a goal bonus in his contract. In the second leg, Bozidar Djurkovic, Ferdinand Chifon and Hristo Koilow scored Union's goals. They remain the club's last European goals to this day.

Berlin's largest "real football stadium": The Alte Försterei, completely rebuilt in 2008/09 and 2012/13, with a capacity of 22,012 spectators, is the largest purpose-built football stadium in the German capital (as of December 2019).

They called them Sebastian: FCU strikers Sebastian Andersson and Sebastian Polter were the most prolific scorers in the Bundesliga promotion season 2018/2019, with twelve and nine goals respectively.