SC Victoria Hamburg

SC Victoria Hamburg is a German association football club from the city of Hamburg. The football team is part of a larger sports club that has departments for badminton, handball, hockey, athletics, tennis, table tennis (playing as SG Victoria Eppendorf), gymnastics, baseball (the Wildcats), and softball (the Oysters).

History

The club was founded 5 May 1895 as FC Victoria Hamburg out of the youth clubs Cito and Excelsior and was briefly affiliated with SV Hamburg before finally becoming a fully independent football club in the fall of 1897. It was one of the founding members of the DFB (Deutscher Fusball Bund or German Football Association) at Leipzig in 1901. Victoria joined the HAFV (Hamburg-Altonaer Fusball Verband or Hamburg-Altona Football Federation) a year later, capturing the league title in 1905. The team won two consecutive north German championships in 1907 and 1908 and advanced as far as the quarterfinals in national championship play in both seasons.

The club was renamed SC Victoria Hamburg on 10 June 1908. Gyula Kertesz coached the side from 1924-28.

In 1933 German football was reorganized under the Third Reich into 16 first division Gauligen. Victoria earned promotion to the Gauliga Nordmark in 1934 and in 1943 won a divisional championship in what had become the Gauliga Hamburg before going out in the first round of the national championship. The team remained in the top flight until the end of World War II.

After the war, occupying Allied authorities banned all organizations in Germany, including sports and football clubs. Victoria was soon re-established and played the 1945 and 1946 seasons in the Stadtliga Hamburg. They were one of four Hamburg sides that joined the newly formed Oberliga Nord (I) for the 1947–48 season where they earned a last place result and were relegated to second-tier play. They made brief re-appearances in the top flight Oberliga in 1951–52 and 1953–54 while spending most of the 50s and 60s in the Amateurliga Hamburg (II).

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