FDGB Pokal
| Founded | 1949 |
|---|---|
| Abolished | 1991 |
| Region | East Germany |
| Number of teams | Various |
| Last champions |
(1st title) |
| Most successful club(s) |
Dynamo Dresden FC Magdeburg (7 titles) |
The FDGB-Pokal (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund Pokal or Free German Trade Union Federation Cup) was an elimination football tournament held annually in the former East Germany. It was the second most important national title in East German football after the DDR-Oberliga championship. The founder of the competition was East Germany's major trade union.
The inaugural FDGB Pokal (generally referred to in English as the East German Cup) was contested in 1949, four years before the initial DFB-Pokal was played in the western half of the country. The first national cup competition had been the Tschammerpokal introduced in 1935.
Each football club which participated in the East German football league system was entitled to enter the tournament. Clubs from the lower leagues played in regional qualification rounds, with the winners joining the teams of the DDR-Oberliga and DDR-Liga in the main round of the tournament of the following year. Each elimination was determined by a single game held on the ground of one of the two participating teams.
Until the mid-80s the field of competition was made up of as many as sixty teams playing in five rounds due to the large number of eligible clubs in the country. Beginning in 1975 the final was held each year in the Berliner Stadion der Weltjugend (Berlin's Stadium for World Youth) and drew anywhere from 30,000 to 55,000 spectators. The last cup final, played in 1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was a 1–0 victory by over Stahl Eisenhüttenstadt, which drew a crowd of only 4,800.
The most successful side in 42 years of competition was 1. FC Magdeburg which celebrated seven FDGB Cup wins (including those as SC Aufbau Magdeburg before 1965); one of those wins ultimately led to victory in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 1973-74.
The only winners of the competition to reach the final of the DFB-Pokal since the re-unification of the country are 1. FC Union Berlin, who appeared in the 2001 German Cup final, but lost 0–2 to Schalke. To date the only other former East German club to appear in the German Cup final is Energie Cottbus.
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