Dissolved 1973 | Founded 1900 | |
 | ||
Full name Sport-Club Tasmania von 1900 Berlin e.V. | ||
Sc tasmania 1900 berlin
SC Tasmania 1900 Berlin was a German football club based in the Berlin district of Neukölln.
Contents
History
The club was founded as Rixdorfer TuFC Tasmania1900 on 2 June 1900. It is believed the founders of the club were about to migrate to Australia at the end of the 19th century, so they named their club after their shared desired destination Tasmania.
In 1965, Berlin's only Bundesliga side, Hertha BSC, had its license revoked and was relegated for breaking the league's player salary rules. The German Football Association wanted to keep a club in the city of Berlin for political reasons and this led to one of the strangest episodes in the Bundesliga's history.
Both Karlsruher SC and FC Schalke 04 tried to avoid being demoted by laying claim to Hertha's place. It was decided to suspend relegation for one season and increase the number of teams in the league from 16 to 18 to accommodate the two teams which would normally be promoted from the Regionalligen (the Regional Leagues being the leagues below the Bundesliga at the time). Cold War politics led to a space being held for a team from the former capital city to replace Hertha.
The winner of Regionalliga Berlin, Tennis Borussia Berlin, had failed to advance to the Bundesliga through the regular promotion round that saw Bayern Munich and Borussia Mönchengladbach move up. After the Regionalliga second-place finisher, Spandauer SV, refused an offer of promotion, the way was clear for third-place club Tasmania 1900 to take up the opportunity to represent Berlin in the Bundesliga — just two weeks before the start of the 1965–66 season.
A top performer in the relatively weak Regionalliga Berlin, Tasmania 1900 would find themselves seriously overmatched in the Bundesliga. Despite a season-opening 2–0 win over Karlsruher SC at the Olympiastadion, they would go on to become the worst team in league history — in a 34-game season they won only twice. They scored only 15 goals while conceding 108 and finished the season in last place earning just 8 of a possible 68 points. The only team not to beat Tasmania was 1. FC Kaiserslautern which managed only two draws (0–0 and 1–1) against them. The 0–0 result at Betzenberg was the only point earned by Tasmania away from their home stadium.
Tasmania were relegated at the end of the season and returned to the Regionalliga Berlin. Although the team made it to the promotion round twice between 1966 and 1973, they never managed a return to the Bundesliga. In 1973, the Neukölln sports association declared bankruptcy.
SV Tasmania Berlin
A successor team, SC Tasmania 73 Neukölln was created, becoming SV Tasmania-Gropiusstadt 1973 in 2000. While the new club's first team had to restart in the lowest division in 1973 and quickly rose through the ranks again, the club's youth teams were permitted to remain in the leagues they played in under the old name. Since 2011, the club has been known as SV Tasmania Berlin.