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.