Sports club
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Sportclub and Sportgemeinschaft are redirections to this article. For specific meanings in the GDR, see Sportclub (DDR) and Sportgemeinschaft (DDR), for an NDR television program, see Sportclub (television program).
A sports club, sports association, sports club or sports club is an association whose aim is to give people who are enthusiastic about sport access to space (e.g. football pitches or sports or gymnastic halls) and sports equipment (e.g. parallel bars and high bar in gymnastics) and like-minded people. Sports clubs are organised into sports federations according to the sports they offer. These offer clubs participation in organised competitions in the form of tournaments or leagues.
There are more than 90,000 sports clubs in Germany, in which around 30% of German citizens are members (as of 2016).
Origin of the sports clubs
The oldest sports clubs in Germany are the shooting clubs. The emergence of sports clubs is connected with the spread of club formation at the beginning of the 19th century, especially patriotically oriented gymnastics and physical exercise clubs. In Napoleon-occupied Germany, under the spiritual paternity of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, nationally oriented young men gathered for exercises in "gymnastics clubs", which outwardly had a sociable, inwardly a subversive-paramilitary character.
The oldest (still existing) gymnastics club in Germany is, according to the German Gymnastics Federation, the gymnastics and sports club TSV 1814 Friedland from Mecklenburg.
Sports clubs in the GDR
In GDR sports, company sports clubs (BSG) and university sports clubs (HSG) fulfilled the function of sports clubs in the popular sports sector. For the individual sports, the sports clubs were subdivided into sections. The respective sponsoring companies were responsible for financing their sports clubs. Membership in a company sports association was not tied to an activity in the associated sponsoring company, but could be freely chosen according to the range of sports on offer.
As a rule, competitive sport was based in the sports clubs (SC). Membership in a sports club could only be obtained on the basis of delegations, which were strictly tied to the performance principle in the cadre system of GDR sports. It was not possible for sportsmen to join sports clubs at their own request.
Fan Culture
While fans of national teams usually stand by "their" team out of patriotism, the reason or cause for the enthusiasm of fans of sports clubs is more individual. Often friends or relatives with the same passion are the reason for choosing a club, often one becomes a fan of the club of the region of birth or the place of residence, but numerous reasons exist why one has chosen "his" club. As English writer Nick Hornby put it, "Few of us chose our clubs, they were simply given to us."
