VfB Lubeck

VfB Lubeck is a German association football club playing in Lubeck, Schleswig-Holstein in the country's north. In addition to its football side the 1,000 member sports club also has departments for badminton, women's gymnastics, handball, and table tennis.

History

Foundation to WW II

The earliest origins of the club go back to a pair of predecessor sides; Ballsportverein Vorwarts Lubeck established on 1 April 1919 and Sportvereinigung Polizei Lubeck founded in 1921.

SV Polizei Lubeck was the local police sports club. In 1931 it was merged with Verein fur Rasensport Lubeck, which was the product of the 1923 union of Fusball Club Alemannia 1905 Lubeck and Lubecker Fusball Club Germania 1913. SVP played well enough to earn appearances in the playoff rounds of the senior north German circuit, but did not enjoy any success. VfR made only a single such appearance, in 1924.

BSV Vorwarts Lubeck played in the Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund (Worker's Gymnastic and Sport Federation) from its founding until 1933 when it was dismantled by the Nazi regime, which regarded workers sports clubs of the sort as politically undesirable. They won city championships in 1927, 1928, and 1931. The club's membership became part of SVP and the expanded association joined the Gauliga Nordmark, one of sixteen top flight divisions formed in the 1933 reorganization of German football under the Third Reich.

The club was renamed Polizei Sportverein Lubeck in 1935 and played in the Gauliga Nordmark until 1942, with its best results coming as third-place finishes.PSV made unsuccessful qualification round appearances in play for the Tschammerpokal, predecessor of today's DFB-Pokal (German Cup) in 1936–38. In 1942 the club was again renamed, becoming Sportgemeinschaft der Ordnungspolizei Lubeck, and moved to the Gauliga Schleswig-Holstein when wartime conditions forced the breakup of the Gauliga Nordmar