East Germany–West Germany football rivalry
| Locale | Europe (UEFA) |
|---|---|
| Teams | East Germany West Germany |
The East Germany–West Germany football rivalry was an association football rivalry between teams from East Germany and West Germany, existing from 1949 to 1990, while two separate German countries existed.
Clubs from the two countries met at official level in both national team and club competitions like the FIFA World Cup or the European Cup. While the West German national team received strong support in East Germany, with supporters from the East often travelling to away matches of the West German team in Eastern Europe, encounters between teams from the East and West in European Cup competitions were often hard-fought.
Arguably the best-known encounters between teams from the two countries were East Germany's 1–0 victory over West Germany in the 1974 FIFA World Cup, the only game between the two national teams, and Bayer 05 Uerdingen's 1986 victory over Dynamo Dresden, dubbed the Miracle of the Grotenburg.
After the end of the Second World War four occupation zones existed in Allied-occupied Germany. The British, French and US zones gradually merged to form West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, on 23 May 1949. In the Soviet occupation zone East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, was formed on 7 October 1949. Separated throughout the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic merged into the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990, referred to as the German reunification.
Football games between teams from the two countries were sometimes referred to as class struggle between the capitalist West and the communist East, but more often just seen as a "fight between brothers" or an inner-German duel.
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