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(from ELFMETER Issue 39)
To commemorate Karlsruhe reaching the German Cup Final for the first time in 40 years, we look back to their last triumph, in 1956--and discover some very strange facts about the competition that season.
The German Cup had first been introduced in the turbulent 1930s, on the initiative of the National Socialist Party's Minister for Sport, Hans von Tschammer und Osten. (Yes, really.) It continued every year until 1943. Resuming in 1952/53 in the fledgling Federal Republic of (West) Germany, it was won in the first three seasons by Rot-Weiss Essen, VfB Stuttgart, and Karlsruhe SC, and was becoming increasingly popular both with fans and clubs alike--even though the European Cup Winners' Cup was still some yea rs away.
Then came the very strange 1955/56 season.
At that time, football in West Germany was run by five powerful regional associations representing the North, West, Southwest, South, and Berlin. In the previous year each region had run qualifying competitions to decide which 32 clubs would be entered in the final national rounds, but for various reasons it was decided that only one club from each region would qualify for the final inter-regional stage. And because of alleged "fixture congestion" the South ran no Cup competition whatsoever, but simply nomi nated Karlsruhe as their representative--perhaps because they were the competition's defending champions. This would not have pleased the likes of mighty clubs like 1.FC Nurnberg, VfB Stuttgart, and Kickers Offenbach. It would seem these functionaries were the type of old farts who would be incapable of running a decent drinking session at the Hofbrauhaus. So, unbelievable but true--the entire German Cup competition of 1955/56 consisted of a mere four matches.
In a sort of preliminary round, the Southwest representative FK Pirmasens travelled to Berlin and, somewhat fortuitously, beat Spandau SV 1-0 before 8,000, thus qualifying for the, er, semi-final. That they lost, at home to Karlsruhe, 5-1, with five different KSC players scoring.
The other semi-final was a controversial, hard-fought affair, with Hamburg SV from the North winning 2-1 away to the West's Fortuna Dusseldorf. Before a crowd of 40,000, Fortuna were denied victory by an impressive display from Horst Schnoor in the visitors' goal--and perhaps by referee Pennig failing to award a rather obvious penalty in the 89th minute. So HSV qualified for the final, which would be held at the Wildparkstadion in Karlsruhe.
With the DFB-Pokal robbed of much of its significance by the strange set-up, significant numbers of the German press and radio pointedly ignored the Cup Final on 5 August 1956. Even the Karlsruhe players were rumoured to have little enthusiasm for the game, still suffering the disappointment of losing 4-2 to Borussia Dortmund in the previous season's German Championship Final in Berlin. Suffice to say the Cup Final crowd of 25,000 was well below the ground's capacity.
The match itself could have been wrapped up by the visitors inside the first half hour. As it was they could only manage one goal, their young striker Uwe Seeler getting it after sixteen minutes. Gradually the KSC defence came to grips with things and five minutes before half-time the experienced Berni Termath scored an equaliser. He then put them ahead after the interval. Five minutes from the end Seeler hit the post, and moments later HSV misery was compounded when Termath set up Toni Kohn to score the la te clincher in a 3-1 win.
And, apart from a couple of Zweite Liga championships, that was the last time Karlsruhe won anything.
