It’s 1987. Lokomotive Leipzig just lost the European Cup Winners final to an Ajax team led by Marco van Basten. Four years later, Lokomotive finished 7th in the now defunct DDR Oberliga (the former East German league), and was sent straight to the 2.Bundesliga play-offs. Now, 30 years since the Unification of Germany, the team is a former shadow of itself and is currently struggling in the Regionalliga Nordost, the 4th tier of German football. The story of Lokomotive is the story of football in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Fast forward to 2020. The Unification is now in the history books, the physical borders have been removed. However that doesn’t tell us the entire story. When it comes to football, the Unification did more harm than good. There’s only one Germany now and only one German football pyramid. If we were to take a look at the first two German divisions, we will see that there are only 2 teams that once represented the now defunct DDR Oberliga: FC Union Berlin (in the Bundesliga) and FC Erzgebirge Aue (in the 2.Bundesliga)
What happened after the Unification?
1990/91 is the last season in which the DDR Oberliga (in the last season it changed its name to NOFV-Oberliga, but for the sake of reducing confusion I shall refer to it as DDR Oberliga for the rest of the article) took place. It was decided that the league would merge with the Bundesliga. The merging would result in only 2 East German teams joining the Bundesliga starting with the 1991–1992 season; the teams that joined were Hansa Rostock, which won the last Oberliga, and Dynamo Dresden, which came second. Hansa also participated in the European Cup, starting in the first round (they were knocked out in the first round by the eventual winners, FC Barcelona). It is important to mention that the reason why Dynamo Dresden didn’t get a European place is due to the fact that they were banned for rioting in the 1990–91 European Cup quarterfinals, in a match against Red Star Belgrade.
The 3rd and 4th places (Rot-Weiß Erfurt and Chemie Halle, now Hallescher FC, respectively) were sent directly to the second tier of German football, the 2.Bundesliga, and also to the first round of the UEFA Cup (now Europa League) — it is good to know that the UEFA Cup was only the 3rd most important European competiton at that time, the 2nd spot being occupied by the now defunct European Cup Winners’ Cup. The team that got the European Cup Winners’ Cup place was Stahl Eisenhüttenstädter, which won the last edition of the FDGB-Pokal.
To recapitulate: 2 teams out of 14 were sent to the Bundesliga, 4 were sent straight to the 2.Bundesliga, another 6 were sent to the 2.Bundesliga play-offs (eventually Stahl Brandenburg and Lokomotive Leipzig won those play-offs), and the teams that came last and should’ve been relegated from the DDR Oberliga were sent to the reformed NOFV-Oberliga, which became the 3rd tier league of German football — basically the Regionalliga for the former territory of East Germany.
It could be argued that the treatment the East German teams received was unfair. I do believe so. Probably the league should’ve continued to work in a parallel system for at least another couple of years, until the Eastern teams would’ve been able to catch up with the German football system — especially the idea that the clubs in the West were made out of professional players, whilst those in the East were considered amateurs. Another big issue was that the teams from the East were state owned, therefore had little to no experience in working in a market based football economy.
The Eastern teams were doomed to fail right from the start. Hansa Rostock got relegated in its first season in the unified Bundesliga, whilst Dynamo Dresden barely survived. Eventually the team from Dresden, after a few years of low-end mediocrity, got relegated at the end of the 1994–1995 season. Hansa came back to the Bundesliga and was arguably the most successful Eastern team in the unified league, managing a 6th place finish in the 1995–1996 season. No more than 2 former DDB teams were ever in the Bundesliga at the same time. The last decade was the saddest for the Eastern teams — between 2009 and 2019, the former league had no representatives in the Bundesliga (RB Leipzig got promoted in 2016, but they’re not a proper Eastern team, they’re a PR invention founded in 2009 to make money— no sense of community there). 2019 brought Union Berlin for the first time in the Bundesliga, and now they’re the lone wolf that represents the East in the first German league. Furthermore, no Eastern team won the DFB-Pokal; the only time an Eastern team got close was in 2001, when Union Berlin reached the final.
In conclusion, the Unification was probably a powerful sign for the Germany that came after, but for the East it wasn’t as good as it looked, especially for Eastern football. From Lokomotive Leipzig representing the DDR Oberliga to a European final, to a decade without any representatives in the first tier of unified football. This is the sad reality of East German football.
I recommend watching this video made by DW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4MMbI7c9L4
