FC Energie Cottbus

FC Energie Cottbus is a German football club based in Cottbus, Brandenburg. It was founded in 1963 as SC Cottbus in what was East Germany. After the reunification of Germany, Energie played six seasons in the third tier of the German football league system before floating between the 2. Bundesliga and Bundesliga for 17 years between 1997 and 2014. Since then the club plays again in third tier 3. Liga.

History

Predecessor sides

FC Energie Cottbus can trace its roots back to a predecessor side of FSV Glückauf Brieske-Senftenberg, a club founded by coal miners in 1919, in what was then called the town of Marga. FV Grube Marga, as the club was called back then, was active until 1924 when the miners left to form a new team called SV Sturm Grube Marga which was banned by the Nazi Party in 1933.

Life in the GDR

The club re-emerged after World War II in 1949 as BSG Franz Mehring Grube, becoming BSG Aktivist Brieske-Ost in 1950. The club was renamed SC Aktivist Brieske-Senftenberg in 1954 and played in the DDR-Oberliga generally earning mid-table results until calamitously falling all the way to the fourth tier Cottbus Bezirksliga in the early 1960s. The players of this side formed SC Energie Cottbus in 1963, whilst the reserve team merged back to BSG Aktivist Brieske-Ost to form BSG Aktivist Senftenberg. The club still exists as FSV Glückauf Brieske-Senftenberg today. SC Cottbus was quickly assisted by a wholesale transfer of players from BSG Aktivist Brieske-Ost ordered by the East German authorities, who often intervened in the business of the country's sports and football clubs for political reasons. East German authorities had a penchant for tagging sports teams with the names of socialist heroes: Franz Mehring was a German socialist politician and journalist.