History — Hertha BSC Through the Decades
25 July 1892 — Gesundbrunnen
On a summer afternoon in the Gesundbrunnen district, a group of Berlin teenagers gathered to establish a football club. They named it Hertha, after a German steamship — a choice that would carry the club through over 130 years of Berlin football history.
The founding was modest: no grand stadium, no imperial backing, just young men who loved the game and the city they played in. From that July day forward, Hertha BSC became a thread running through Berlin's life — through imperial times, through two world wars, through division and reunification, and into the modern age.
What began in Gesundbrunnen would become Berlin's oldest football club and one of the German game's most enduring institutions.
1926–1931: The championship years
The late 1920s and early 1930s represented the highest peak in Hertha's domestic history. In an era when German football was reaching new technical maturity, Hertha emerged as the nation's dominant force.
The club reached the German championship final in 1926 and 1927, establishing itself as a genuine title contender. Then came the breakthrough: German championships in 1930 and 1931, the only two national titles Hertha BSC has ever won.
These triumphs were built on the leadership of Hanne Sobek, one of the club's most celebrated captains and players in its history. Sobek's skill, vision and command elevated Hertha to a level few German clubs could match. Under his influence, the team played with a style that made Berlin's Platz football grounds — and later the Olympiastadion — a destination for serious supporters.
Those championships stand as a permanent testament to what Hertha achieved in its first four decades: not just survival, but genuine greatness.
1963: Bundesliga founding member
When West Germany established the Bundesliga in 1963 — creating a unified top-flight professional league to replace the fragmented regional championships — Hertha BSC was selected as a founding member. The club's pedigree, its Berlin roots and its stature in German football made it a natural choice.
That same year marked another turning point: Hertha moved to the Olympiastadion Berlin as its permanent home. Built for the 1936 Olympics and scarred by the city's twentieth-century history, the Olympiastadion became Hertha's stage — a stadium of European scale befitting a club that had survived everything Berlin endured.
The combination — founding Bundesliga status and a world-class venue — positioned Hertha as a centrepiece of West German football during the Cold War. The club carried not just sporting ambition but the weight of representing Berlin itself on the national stage.
Turbulence and transformation
The decades since Hertha's Bundesliga founding have been more volatile than the glory years of the 1920s and 1930s. The club rose and fell, competing in the top flight for long stretches but also dropping into the 2. Bundesliga multiple times — a cycle that tested both supporters and management.
In 2019, Lars Windhorst's Tennor Holding made a major financial investment in the club, bringing significant capital and ambition. The investment was intended to stabilize Hertha and push it toward sustained success at the highest level.
That hope faced a severe test in 2023, when Hertha was relegated from the Bundesliga — a blow that ranks among the most painful moments in the club's recent history. Relegation brought real questions about the direction of the club and the effectiveness of the previous strategy.
Yet this too is part of Hertha's story. A 130-year-old institution does not survive by pretending difficulty does not exist. Hertha has lived through far greater upheavals. The task now is to rebuild, to return to the Bundesliga and to reestablish what made the club a fixture of Berlin life across generations.
The Berlin Derby: Hertha vs. Union
For decades, Hertha BSC's greatest rival was not another Bundesliga powerhouse but the city itself. When East and West Berlin were divided, Hertha played in the West while 1. FC Union Berlin represented the East — two clubs separated by a wall, unable to meet.
German reunification changed everything. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany reunited, the path opened for Hertha and Union to share the Bundesliga landscape once again. The Berlin Derby — das Berliner Derby — transformed from a historical absence into one of German football's most intense modern rivalries.
The fixture carries weight beyond sport. It represents two visions of Berlin football, two neighborhoods, and a city's own history written across a pitch. Every match between Hertha and Union reminds supporters and opponents alike that this is not merely a game — it is Berlin football, and Berlin does not take these things lightly.