KSV Baunatal

KSV Baunatal is a German association football club based in Baunatal, Hesse. The team was founded on 13 April 1964 out of the union of KSV Altenritte and KSV Altenbauna.

The club's greatest success has been its three seasons spent in the second division, the 2nd Bundesliga Sud, from 1976 to 1979.

History

Predecessor side KSV Altenritte had roots that go back to the much earlier establishment of the gymnastics club Turnverein Gut-Heil Altenritte on 2 September 1892. A football department was founded within this club in 1914. In 1933, TV was joined by the membership of Arbeiter TV Altenritte – one of the many worker's sports clubs disbanded as politically unpalatable under the Nazi regime – to become VfL Altenritte. In 1945, following World War II, the team re-emerged as KSV Alteritte.

Another predecessor, KSV Altenbauna, was established in 1904 as Deutscher Turnverein Altenbauna and in 1918, following World War I, played as Deutscher Turn- und Sportverein Altenbauna. DTSV became TV Gut-Heil Altenbauna in 1933 and KSV Altenbauna in 1945.

After the 1964 merger that united these two clubs as KSV Baunatal, the association grew again when joined by SV Baunatal in 1970. SV was founded in 1921 as Arbeiter Turn- und Sportverein Kirchbauna and was one of the many worker's clubs that disappeared under the Third Reich. It was re-established in 1945 as Freier SV Kirchbauna by the former members of ATSV and another worker's side known as TV Gut Heil Kirchbauna. FSV briefly adopted the name SpVgg Kirchbauna in 1955 before becoming SV Baunatal the same year.

The long string of mergers of these unremarkable sides paid dividends when KSV Baunatal rose up out of lower-tier competition into the Oberliga Hessen (III) in 1970. The club slipped to the Landesliga Hessen-Nord (IV) for a single season, but promptly reclaimed a place in t