Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg
Founded
1923
Disbanded
1933
Nation
Germany Germany Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Province Provinces of Prussia The Provinces of Prussia constituted the main administrative divisions of Prussia. Following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the various princely states in Germany gained their nominal sovereignty, but the reunification process that culminated in...
Province of Brandenburg Province of Brandenburg The Province of Brandenburg was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1815 to 1946.-History:The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Suevi. They were succeeded by the Slavonians, whom Henry II conquered and converted to Christianity in...
Number of Seasons
10
Replaced by
Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg The Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg was the highest football league in the provinces of Brandenburg and Berlin in the German state of Prussia from 1933 to 1945...
Level on Pyramid
Level 1 German football league system The German football league system, or league pyramid, refers to a series of hierarchically interconnected leagues for association football clubs in Germany that consists of over 2,300 men's divisions, in which all leagues are bound together by the principle of promotion and relegation...
Domestic Cup
Berlin Cup Berlin Cup The Berliner Landespokal is an annual football cup competition held by the Berlin Football Association . The cup winner qualifies for the national DFB-Pokal. Cup finals are usually held in the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark. The competition has been held since 1906, with various interruptions...
Last Champions 1932-33
Hertha BSC Berlin Hertha BSC Berlin Hertha Berliner Sport-Club von 1892, commonly known as Hertha BSC or Hertha Berlin, is a German association football club based in Berlin. A founding member of the German Football Association in Leipzig in 1900, the club has a long history as Berlin's best-supported side...

The Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg was the highest association football competition in the Prussian

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

 Province of Brandenburg

Province of Brandenburg

The Province of Brandenburg was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1815 to 1946.-History:The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Suevi. They were succeeded by the Slavonians, whom Henry II conquered and converted to Christianity in...

, including Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, from 1923 to 1933. The competition was disbanded in 1933 with the rise of the Nazis to power.

History

The league was formed in 1923, after a league reform which was decided upon in Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

, Hesse

Hesse

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

.

Until the introduction of the Oberliga, the Verbandsliga Berlin-Brandenburg was the highest league in the state. This league had been formed after the First World War.

The Oberliga, like the Verbandsliga before, consisted of two divisions of ten clubs each who would determine their champions in a home-and-away format. The two divisional champions would then play for the Brandenburg championship in a two-game series. Should each team win one game, a third game was held as a decider.

The Brandenburg champion would then continue on to play in the German football championship. From 1925 onwards, the runners-up of Brandenburg was also qualified for an enlarged national championship.

Below the league, as the second division in Brandenburg, four Kreisligas were set, those being:

• Kreisliga Brandenburg Nordkreis
• Kreisliga Brandenburg Westkreis
• Kreisliga Brandenburg Ostkreis
• Kreisliga Brandenburg Südkreis

From 1925 onwards, until 1931, the league was dominated by Hertha BSC Berlin, who won it every season in this time. Hertha, after reaching the semi-finals of the national championship in 1925, played in each of the German final games from 1926 to 1931, a record only matched by FC Schalke 04

FC Schalke 04

Fußball-Club Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04, commonly known as simply FC Schalke 04 or Schalke , is a German, association-football club originally from the Schalke district of Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia. Schalke has long been one of the most popular football teams in Germany, even though major...

 from 1937 to 1942. Unlike Schalke, who won four of those finals and only lost two, Hertha lost the first four to win the last two.

The league and its modus did not change at all until 1930, when, on 18 January, the clubs from the western part of Pomerania

Pomerania

Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...

 joined the Brandenburg football championship, but not the Oberliga. This meant, instead of two or three final games between the two divisional champions, a four team finals tournament was introduced in 1931, consisting of the two Oberliga division winners, the Pomeranian champion and the Berlin Cup

Berlin Cup

The Berliner Landespokal is an annual football cup competition held by the Berlin Football Association . The cup winner qualifies for the national DFB-Pokal. Cup finals are usually held in the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark. The competition has been held since 1906, with various interruptions...

 winner.

The 1932 edition saw the end of an era; Hertha only came second in its division and was therefore not qualified for the Brandenburg championship. The tournament was held with only three clubs, the Berlin Cup winner, incidentally Hertha, did not take part.

Hertha returned in 1933 to win the last championship of the Oberliga and Brandenburg. The clubs golden age had come to an end, however, as evident by the fact that it bowed out in the first round of the German championship to un-heralded SV Hindenburg Allenstein

SV Hindenburg Allenstein

SV Hindenburg Allenstein was a German football club from the city of Allenstein, East Prussia .The club was formed in 1921 as Sportvereinigung Hindenburg Allenstein and was named for German Field Marshal and Reichs President Paul von Hindenburg. Sometime in 1935 it became a military side and played...

, which in turn was beaten 12-2 by Eintracht Frankfurt

Eintracht Frankfurt

Eintracht Frankfurt is a German sports club, based in Frankfurt, Hesse that is best known for its association football club.- Club origins :...

 in the second round.

With the rise of the Nazis to power, the Gauligas

Gauliga

A Gauliga was the highest level of play in German football from 1934-45. The leagues were introduced in 1933, after the Nazi takeover of power by the Sports office of the Third Reich.-Name:...

were introduced as the highest football leagues in Germany. In Brandenburg, the Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg

Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg

The Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg was the highest football league in the provinces of Brandenburg and Berlin in the German state of Prussia from 1933 to 1945...

replaced the Oberliga as the highest level of play. The eleven best teams from the league qualified for this new single-division league. A twelfth team, the SV Cottbus-Süd, came from the Bezirksliga Niederlausitz.

Champions

Season	Division A	Division B	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3
1924	Norden-Nordwest Berlin Norden-Nordwest Berlin SV Norden-Nordwest is a German association football club from Berlin. It was established as Berliner Fußball Club des Nordens on 16 October 1898 and in 1906 merged with Berliner Fußball Club Norden-West, also established in 1898, to play as FC Norden-Nordwest Berlin...	BFC 90 Alemannia	2-2	1-3	—
1925	Hertha BSC Berlin Hertha BSC Berlin Hertha Berliner Sport-Club von 1892, commonly known as Hertha BSC or Hertha Berlin, is a German association football club based in Berlin. A founding member of the German Football Association in Leipzig in 1900, the club has a long history as Berlin's best-supported side...	BFC 90 Alemannia	3-1	3-2	—
1926	Hertha BSC Berlin	Norden-Nordwest Berlin	7-0	2-1	—
1927	Hertha BSC Berlin	BSC Kickers 1900	4-1	6-2	—
1928	Hertha BSC Berlin	Tennis Borussia Berlin Tennis Borussia Berlin Tennis Borussia Berlin is a German football club based in Berlin-Westend.- History :The team was founded in 1902 and takes its name from its origins as a tennis and ping-pong club. "Borussia" is a Latinised version of Prussia. In 1903 the club took up football and quickly developed a rivalry with...	3-1	1-2	4-0
1929	Hertha BSC Berlin	Tennis Borussia Berlin	1-0	0-1	5-2
1930	Hertha BSC Berlin	Tennis Borussia Berlin	3-1	2-0	—

Season	Division A	Division B	Pomerania	Berlin Cup
1931	Hertha BSC Berlin	Tennis Borussia Berlin	Polizei SV Stettin	Berliner SV 92
1932	SC Minerva 93	Tennis Borussia Berlin	Stettiner SC	N/A
1933	Hertha BSC Berlin	BFC Viktoria 89	Stettiner SC	Berliner SV 92

• Winners in bold.

Sources

• Fussball-Jahrbuch Deutschland (8 vol.), Tables and results of the German tier-one leagues 1919-33, publisher: DSFS
• Kicker Almanach, The yearbook on German football from Bundesliga to Oberliga, since 1937, published by the Kicker Sports Magazine
  Kicker (sports magazine)
  kicker Sportmagazin is Germany's leading sports magazine and is focused primarily on football. The magazine was founded in 1920 by German football pioneer Walther Bensemann and is published twice a week, usually Monday and Thursday, in Nuremberg...
  
  

External links

The Gauligas Das Deutsche Fussball Archiv German league tables 1892-1933 Hirschi's Fussball seiten

• Germany - Championships 1902-1945 at RSSSF.com