FV Ravensburg

The FV Ravensburg is a German association football club from the town of Ravensburg, Baden-Wurttemberg.

The club's greatest success has been to play in the Oberliga Baden-Wurttemberg, the highest football league in the state, of which it became a founding member in 1978. It played at this level from 1978 to 1983, 1998 to 2000 and, again, since 2013.

History

The club was formed as FC Ravensburg in 1893, the same year as fellow Wurttemberg club VfB Stuttgart, as one of the first football clubs in what was then the Kingdom of Wurttemberg. In 1907 a second football club was formed in Ravensburg, the FC Rauenegg which soon after merged with the FCR. In the era up to the early 1930s the club competed in the local leagues around Lake Constance (German:Bodensee), playing in an international competition, the Bodensee– Fusball–Vereinigung and Bodensee–Vorarlberg–Liga, that included clubs from Austria and Switzerland, like FC Lustenau and FC St. Gallen. When the Nazis rose to power, however, this cross-border competition ceased to exist and the club joined the new Schwarzwald–Bodensee–Liga instead. In between, during the First World War football came to a halt and when it restarted in 1918 the club changed its name to FV Ravensburg. Around that time, in 1919, the club also moved to its current home ground, the Wiesental.

After the Second World War the club received permission from the Gouvernement Militaire Ravensburg, the local French military occupation authorities, to reform and enter the new second tier of local football, the Landesliga Sudwurttemberg. It initially played under the name of SV Ravensburg but later returned to its old name. This league was disbanded in 1950 and the best clubs joined the new Amateurliga Wurttemberg, but FVR was not one of them.

In 1956 the club earned promotion to the Amateurliga Wurttemberg, then the third tier of the German football league system. It played for three seasons at