SAMSTAG 15:30

Founded: Mar 4, 1946
Club Members: 9,427
Nickname: Die Veilchen
Coach: Pavel Dotchev
Captain: Martin Männel

DDR Oberliga Champions: 3
FDGB-Pokal: 1
Regionalliga Nord: 1
Landespokal Sachsen Winner: 4

Website: www.fc-erzgebirge.de
 

Known as the 'Schalke of the East' on account of their shared mining heritage, FC Erzgebirge Aue's history is like that of many former East German clubs - a constant flux of mergers, dissolutions and name changes. Their origins can be traced back to the formation of a long-forgotten club called FC Aue in 1908 and after a couple of early name changes, which saw them become FC Jung Deutschland in 1910 and then FC Alemannia Aue in 1912, the club won their first silverware when they lifted the inaugural Gauliga Erzgebirge title in 1913. Another name change - this time to SV Alemannia Aue - followed in 1921 and the club settled down as a largely uncompetitive side in the second-tier Gau Sachsen until pressure from the National Socialists forced a merger with VfB Aue and the creation of a new club called SV Aue in 1937.

Allied tanks on the streets of Berlin brought Hitler's 'Thousand Year Reich' to an end in 1945 and a policy of de-Nazification in occupied Germany saw all sports clubs forced to disband. With no team to support, fans were on the look-out for an 'ideologically safe' representative - one that didn't have any links to fascism - and amidst simmering tension between the western allies and the Soviets, a new club called SG Aue (SG stands for 'Sports Community') rose from the ashes in 1946. A series of name changes over the next few years saw them called 'BSG Pneumatik Aue' (1949) and 'BSG Zentra Wismut Aue' (1950) before settling on 'BSG Wismut Aue' in 1951. That same year, Wismut (named after the local mining company that was the club's primary state-backed sponsor) became one of the founding members of the top-flight DDR-Oberliga and finished as national runners-up in 1953 after a narrow 3-2 defeat against eventual champions SG Dynamo Dresden in the play-off final.

Football may not have been a religion in East Germany, but it did carry a hefty ideological burden. Erich Mielke, the infamous head of the Stasi, once said "Football success will highlight even more clearly the superiority of our socialist order in the area of sport"  and it was the practice of 'Leistungssteigerung durch Konzentration' (increased performance through concentration) that saw Wismut's near neighbours BSG Empor Lauter ordered to relocate to the Baltic port city of Rostock in 1954. Empor's eviction from Saxony, which had become something of a football hotbed in the East, left a void for Wismut to try and establish themselves as 'the team of the Erzgerbirge'. The apparatchiks however had other plans in mind for them and having decided that the city of Karl Marx Stadt (now 'Chemnitz', if you're looking for it on a map) could also do with a decent team, told Wismut to pack up and form a new club in the regional capital. Whilst fans in Lauter had been powerless to prevent their relocation, the town of Aue is no stranger to resistance and three years after its miners staged East Germany's first strike in 1951, they threatened to down tools again in protest at the potential loss of their football club. The stand made by the Wismut Kumpels  (workmates) forced the state authorities into a compromise that would see the Wismut team continue to play at their Otto Grotewohl Stadion in Aue but only with a new identity - that of SC Wismut Karl Marx Stadt.

It was under this new name that the club became a dominant force for the rest of the decade - winning three DDR-Oberliga titles, an FDGB-Pokal and becoming the first East German side to play in the European Cup when they were given a first-round draw against Dutch champions Ajax in 1957. The tie against the inventors of total football however also highlighted the straitened economic realities of being a modest club from a small mountain town on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Having lost the home leg 3-1, Wismut were making their way to the Netherlands for the return match but with GDR authorities holding the purse strings for sports-related travel very tightly, a missed connection saw the travellers stranded in West Germany without any money. Wismut coach Fritz Gödicke ended up pawning his watch and managed to scrape together enough Deutschmarks to buy his squad a frugal meal and three-in-a-bed accommodation that night. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the team lost 1-0 in Amsterdam the following day and crashed out of the competition but, after learning about their visitors' less than ideal preparation, Ajax officials generously picked up the Wismut hotel tab and took Gödicke's watch 'out of hock' for him.

After coming close to adding another FDGB-Pokal to the trophy cabinet in 1959 (they lost 3-2 after a replay against SC Dynamo Berlin), the club reclaimed their post-war identity of BSG Wismut Aue in 1963 and became an almost permanent fixture in the Oberliga - spending every season in the top-flight right up until the end of the 1980s despite the rise of hooliganism and widespread corruption destabilising the once-great league.

By then however, the winds of change were blowing across Europe as socio-political events superseded sport and as the Berlin Wall fell and a demographic exodus headed west, football across the unified Germany was re-organised. Now known as FC Wismut Aue, the club began the post-Wende era in the fourth-tier NOFV Oberliga Süd but like many former East German clubs post-reunification, the ever-increasing gap between profit and loss as a result of dwindling attendances and an inability to compete with the riches of clubs in 'the west' brought Wismut to the brink of bankruptcy by 1992. A financial restructuring plan headed up by future club presidents Uwe and Helge Leonhardt walked the club back from the cliff edge before attention turned to the battle for hearts and minds in order to keep the turnstiles turning and prevent a repeat of previous financial struggles. As the biggest employer in the region, many in the Erzgebirge identified with the name 'Wismut' - even though the company mined uranium for the Soviet Union's nuclear missile programme. The Leonhardt brothers however saw the opportunity for a reboot and promote the whole region through its football club without any association to Cold War tensions. In 1992 therefore Uwe Leonhardt made the announcement that "There is FC Bayern München ... and there is now FC Erzgebirge Aue! " 

Rebranding the club and securing its financial future seemed to liberate Erzgebirge on the pitch and as the storm clouds lifted, they began a resurgence that saw them rise to the third-tier Regionalliga Nord, before holding off the challenge of VfL Osnabrück in 2003 to win the league and promotion to Bundesliga.2. With a population of just 17,000, Aue became one of the smallest towns to have ever hosted Bundesliga.2 football but managed to hold their own in the German second tier for the best part of the next 20 years - often being the highest-ranked of all the GDR clubs that began the 'Turning Season' in 1989. A return to 3.Liga lies ahead for this season but, for the fans at least, it's never been about chasing glory on the pitch - it's about their club being the beating heart of a proud mining region that football helped put on the map.