VfB Pankow
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| Full name | VfB Einheit zu Pankow 1893 e.V. |
|---|---|
| Founded | 18 September 1893 |
| Ground | Paul-Zobel-Sportplatz |
| League | Kreisliga A Berlin Staffel 2 (IX) |
| 2015–16 | 4th |
VfB Einheit zu Pankow is a German association football club from the Pankow district of Berlin.
Founded in 1893 as VfB Pankow, the club's initial interests were in cricket and tennis. Within a few years English expatriates introduced football, which soon displaced cricket. The club grew quickly and came to include departments for gymnastics, fencing, and cycling.
The football team played in the early Berlin-based leagues and became one of the founding members of the German Football Association (Deutscher Fussball Bund or German Football Association) at Leipzig in 1900.
VfB played as a lower table side in the Verbandsliga Berlin-Brandenburg (later the Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg) through the late 1910s and into the early 1920s until touched by scandal in the 1924–25 season. Although they finished just clear of relegation on goal difference they were forced into a two-game relegation playoff because the team had come under suspicion of manipulating some of its matches. They lost both contests to Preußen Berlin (0:6, 0:1) and dropped out of top-flight play for a number of years.
Pankow was able to play their way back to premier level football in 1930 and in 1933 earned their best result with a second-place finish in the Oberliga Berlin-Brandenburg, Staffel B. The next season German football was reorganized under the Third Reich into sixteen top flight Gauligen and the club joined the Gauliga Berlin-Brandenburg where they continued to deliver poor finishes until relegated again in 1936.
After the end of World War II in 1945 occupying Allied forces ordered most organizations in Germany disbanded, including sports and football clubs. Late in the year the establishment of new clubs was permitted and VfB was re-created as SG Pankow Nord. The club was later the first side to be permitted play under its original name. In 1947 they re-appeared in the Oberliga Berlin (I) but were soon caught up in the Cold War politics of post-war Germany. By the end of the 1950 season they were forced out of the Oberliga and into the DDR-Oberliga, the first division league established in the Soviet-occupied part of the country.
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