Good to Know — Union Berlin
“Eisern Union” has been around for a very long time.
Good to Know
“Eisern Union” has been around for a very long time.
“Eisern Union” has been around for a very
“Eisern Union” has been around for a very long time.
“Eisern Union” has been around for a very long time. Union Berlin enjoy cult status well beyond football circles and far beyond Berlin. Like hardly any other club from the former GDR, Union cherish the image of a workers’ club, complete with a lovable, slightly quirky aura and a touch of Ostalgie. Their famous rallying cry, also the title of the club anthem sung by Nina Hagen, is “Eisern Union”. That much is common knowledge. Less well known is that the cry is almost a hundred years old and probably dates back to the 1920s or 1930s. Many supporters and players of predecessor club SC Union Oberschöneweide worked after the First World War in the industrial plants of Oberschöneweide, at that time a major industrial cluster of around 25 large firms and numerous workshops and laboratories, mainly in electrical engineering, metalwork and machinery. Work there was physically punishing and demanded an iron will. A metallic, martial chant mirroring the industrial atmosphere suited the local club perfectly, especially since Union already cultivated a particularly athletic, uncompromising style of football. One urban legend says the chant first rang out against Hertha BSC when a draw against superior Herthaners seemed about to slip away. Another says it grew from the nickname Schlosserjungs, the locksmith lads, given to Union because of their blue kits and working-class roots before 1933.
Party outsiders, hippies, hooligans and other ideologically ...
Party outsiders, hippies, hooligans and other ideologically alien types sang anarchic songs: during the GDR era, Union became a magnet for people who wanted little to do with official ideology.
Party outsiders, hippies, hooligans and other ideologically alien types sang anarchic songs: during the GDR era, Union became a magnet for people who wanted little to do with official ideology. The club offered a counter-model to East Berlin’s BFC Dynamo and to Vorwärts, the army club that first dominated East German football and was later relocated to Frankfurt an der Oder. Union fans sang lines such as “Better to be a loser than a stupid Stasi pig.” That was known even in the West. What is less widely understood is how deeply this anarchic blend of underdog feeling and resistance to authority still shapes Union’s fan scene. A classic Union chant that emerged in the early 2000s and is still sung today captures exactly that spirit: the father dead in prison, the mother dying in bed, the sister turned prostitute – what am I supposed to do alone in this world? Union above all, Germany’s most immortal team. Union will never fall apart. Eisern Union from Berlin.
Union versus BFC Dynamo, Tennis Borussia and Hertha
Union versus BFC Dynamo, Tennis Borussia and Hertha BSC: Union’s supporters have long cultivated fierce rivalries within Berlin, above all with the “Stasi club” BFC Dynamo and, in the 1990s, with the “class enemy” Tennis Borussia from Charlottenburg.
Union versus BFC Dynamo, Tennis Borussia and Hertha BSC: Union’s supporters have long cultivated fierce rivalries within Berlin, above all with the “Stasi club” BFC Dynamo and, in the 1990s, with the “class enemy” Tennis Borussia from Charlottenburg. Less well known are some of the details and, above all, the very special relationship with a third Berlin club: Hertha. For many old Union supporters, the main enemy still comes from the East. In the 2019/20 season, of course, the clubs no longer met at eye level, BFC being in the Regionalliga and Union in the Bundesliga. In the GDR period it was different and BFC regularly shredded Union. What fewer people remember today is that from 1976 to 1989 there were no true home matches between the two. For “security reasons”, all local derbies were moved to the Stadion der Weltjugend in central Berlin. The exception was the cup quarter-final in December 1988, but even there it did not help Union much. They lost 2–0 before 20,000 at the Alte Försterei.
After reunification, Tennis Borussia became the new object
After reunification, Tennis Borussia became the new object of hatred.
After reunification, Tennis Borussia became the new object of hatred. Union supporters cultivated an irreconcilable feud with the flamboyant Charlottenburg club once led and supported by TV showman Hans Rosenthal and Schlager producer Jack White. One of TeBe’s most colourful players, Ansgar Brinkmann, caused a particular provocation when he turned up at the Alte Försterei for the first promotion playoff between Union and Osnabrück in May 2000 and was greeted with threats and abuse. “What is he doing here? We’re a workers’ club,” was among the milder comments directed at Trinkmann.
Where there are enemies, there are often friends.
Where there are enemies, there are often friends.
Where there are enemies, there are often friends. What is quite unknown outside Berlin is that during the Wall years, Hertha and Union supporters felt genuine sympathy for one another. As Berlin landlubbers connected by water, the ones in the far West and the others in the far East, they expressed it like this: “We hold together like wind and sea – blue-and-white Hertha and FC Union.” Another urban legend has Hertha cult fan Pepe Mager sewing special patches celebrating this friendship. Today that old sympathy has long since curdled into antipathy. Why? Because there can be only one. Tennis Borussia and BFC Dynamo have long ceased to be opponents on equal terms for Union. Hertha, by contrast, provides the ideal counter-model. Hertha with Lars Windhorst as investor and Jürgen Klinsmann in the supervisory board and then in the dugout wanted to be seen as the metropolitan club and number one in the capital. Union styled themselves as the ambitious neighbourhood club from the East, built on heart, warmth and feeling. With considerable success. Hertha still had more members in late 2019, around 37,000 to Union’s 32,000-plus, but Union were growing far faster and were developing a cult appeal of their own that reached well beyond East Germany. Union stood for a kind of new-old Berlin, while Hertha kept being associated with the old West Berlin of a supposedly functioning sector, mixed with foolish spending, mediocre management and misplaced hubris.
What very few outside Berlin know: there are
What very few outside Berlin know: there are not one but two Union Berlins, and Hertha icon Johannes Sobek played a major role in that story.
What very few outside Berlin know: there are not one but two Union Berlins, and Hertha icon Johannes Sobek played a major role in that story. In 1949, the East German sports authorities rejected the planned introduction of a professional player statute in West Berlin’s city league and withdrew Union from the league for the following season. Union reacted by playing out the rest of the season’s home games in the Poststadion in Moabit. The team, coached by Johannes Sobek, qualified as runners-up for the German championship finals. But the political leadership in the East forbade the trip to Kiel for the game against HSV. Almost the entire first team then crossed over to the West and played anyway. Two weeks later, on 9 June 1950, they founded SC Union 06 Berlin in Moabit. That western twin was considerably more successful in its first years than the original Union side in Oberschöneweide. Only at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s did the western club lose its place near the top of West Berlin football and fade into an amateur outfit. In March 1952, the “brother duel” finally took place before 20,000 spectators: the eastern side, by then called BSG Motor Oberschöneweide, lost 2–0 to the western Union.
Good to Know — Update 2020–2026
The story of 1.
The story of 1. FC Union Berlin between
The story of 1.
The story of 1. FC Union Berlin between 2020 and 2026 is perhaps the most incredible in all of German professional football. In 2019 the club from the Alte Forsterei was promoted to the Bundesliga for the first time. What followed was a rise without historical precedent.
Seventh place in 2020/21. Fifth and the Conference
Seventh place in 2020/21.
Seventh place in 2020/21. Fifth and the Conference League in 2021/22. Fourth and Europe again in 2022/23. And then: the Champions League in 2023/24. In just four years, a club from the Berlin district of Kopenick — with a stadium partly built by its own supporters — climbed from the 2. Bundesliga into the Champions League.
But disillusion awaited at the summit. In the
But disillusion awaited at the summit.
But disillusion awaited at the summit. In the 2023/24 Champions League group stage, Union did not win a single match. Zero wins, minimal return in front of goal, six defeats. It was one of the weakest Champions League campaigns by a German club of any kind. At the same time, the side crashed down in the Bundesliga as well — from Champions League participants into a relegation battle. Urs Fischer, the architect of the entire rise, was dismissed. It marked the end of an era.