FC Concordia Wilhelmsruh is a German football club based in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. The club was founded on 29 June 1895 as Concordia Berlin and was one of the founding members of the

German Football Association The German Football Association ( ; DFB ) is the governing body of Association football, football, futsal, and beach soccer in Germany. A founding member of both FIFA and UEFA, the DFB has jurisdiction for the German football league system and ...

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

in 1900. It is named after Concordia, the Roman goddess of unity.

History

In its early years the club moved between first and second division level play on the local city circuit and captured its first honors with a second division title in 1901. That advanced the club to the Oberliga Berlin where they played a single season before becoming part of the Berliner Meisterschaft, a competing first tier circuit. They returned to Oberliga play in 1911. The team twice appeared in Berliner-Pokal (Berlin Cup) play, being put out by Weißenseer FC in a 1910 semifinal match, and in 1929, being thrashed 11–0 by

Hertha BSC Hertha, Berliner Sport-Club e. V., commonly known as Hertha BSC () or Hertha Berlin, is a German professional football club based in Berlin. Hertha BSC plays in the 2. Bundesliga, the second tier of German football league system, German footbal ...

in a quarterfinal contest. Concordia fell to amateur level play at the end of the 1911–12 campaign. They merged with an unnamed local side in 1924 to become ''Ballspiel-Club Concordia vom Jahre 1895''.Grüne, Hardy (2001). Enzyklopädie des deutschen Ligafußballs 7. Vereinslexikon. Kassel: Agon-Sportverlag. . The team remained a lower-tier side until after World War II in 1945. In the aftermath of the war Allied occupation authorities banned all existing organizations in Germany, including sports and football clubs. Concordia was re-established as ''SG Wilhelmsruh'' and resumed play in the

Amateurliga Berlin The Amateur-Oberliga Berlin was the second tier of the German football league system in the city of West Berlin in Germany from 1947 until the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963, operating under the name of Amateurliga Berlin. After 1963, it was ...

(II) in the 1947–48 season. The next year the club was renamed ''FC Concordia Wilhelmsruh'' and played two more seasons in the Amateurliga as a mid-table side. The burgeoning

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

that would divide the country into

East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...

and

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

led to the formation of separate football leagues in the Soviet-occupied areas. Being based in what would become

East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...

, Concordia was ousted from the Amateurliga Berlin to play in the

DDR-Liga The DDR-Liga (English: GDR League or ''East German League'') was, prior to German reunification in 1990, the second level of football competition in the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or German Democratic Republic, commonly East Germany), bei ...

(II) as SG Concordia Wilhelmsruh. They were immediately relegated to the Landesliga Berlin (III) after only a single season and a last place finish. The club then played third-tier football until the mid-1950s when it slipped deeper into the amateur ranks, making only occasional and fleeting appearances in the Bezirksliga Berlin through the 1970s and 1980s. The club collapsed after

German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...

and was re-established in May 1992. Today the team fields a total of eighteen teams and emphasizes its youth sides. The men's team (I) played in the Bezirksliga Berlin (VIII) until 2015 when a league championship took it up to the Landesliga. It came last in its Landesliga division in 2015–16 and was relegated once more. Concordia was relegated even lower next season to the Kreisliga (IX).

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilhelmsruh, Fc Concordia Football clubs in Germany Football clubs in Berlin Football clubs in East Germany Association football clubs established in 1895 1895 establishments in Germany