Sports associations (East Germany)

Sports Associations (German: Sportvereinigung, German pronunciation: [ˈspɔʁtˌfɛɐ̯ˈʔaɪ̯nɪɡʊŋ]) in East Germany were sports agencies for certain economic branches of the whole society, which were members of the East German Sports Association (DTSB). Members of biggest social employers had their own branch sports clubs or the Sportvereinigung.

After 1954 they separated amateur sport from professional sport, and from 1961, most Trade Sports-Associations of sports societies in the GDR had been closed but existed under single clubs with the name Betriebssportgemeinschaft or BSG ("Cooperative Sports Collective"). In 1966, the football sections were separated and they used the name Fußballclub (FC). They had to conform to the rules of the East German Sports Association. The sections of the associations were called Sports Clubs (SCs) for only the professional athletes.

The best were the Sportvereinigung Dynamo and the Sportvereinigung Vorwärts, while the worst were the SV Traktor and SV Aufbau.

After World War II, the Allied Control Commission had dissolved all existing sports structures, including the dissolution of all existing sports clubs on the basis of directive 23, dated 17 December 1945. This directive only allowed the establishment of sports organizations on a local level. In consequence, sport competitions were only permitted on a local level with loosely organized Sportgemeinschaften (sport collectives) in cities and on Landkreis level. Only in the fall of 1946 were football resumed on Land level. The competition was organized by the youth organization Free German Youth (FDJ).

After the first football championship in the Soviet occupation zone had been held in the summer of 1948, it became clear that the loose organization would not be sufficient to organize league play. On an initiative of the Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB, the central labor union of East Germany) and FDJ, the Deutscher Sportausschuß (DS) was created as an umbrella organization for sports in the Soviet zone. Among its first tasks was the re-structuring of the sports organizations that was tackled with the credo "rearrangement based on production". With participation of the FDGB the existing Sportgemeinschaften were replaced by newly created Betriebssportgemeinschaft (BSG) (German pronunciation: [bəˈtri:psˌˈspɔʁtˌˈɡɛmɛiːnʃaft]) in production and trade companies. The so-called Trägerbetriebe (supporting companies) would take over tasks of financing and logistics for their respective BSGs, with the union chapter responsible for the day-to-day management. The BSG would be tasked with organizing a large spectrum of sports activities and usually would offer a range of different sports. Each BSG had its own administrative board with a chairman and heads for the different sports sections. Financial means were provided by the Trägerbetrieb. and often the infrastructure would be built by the companies as well.

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