SAMSTAG 15:30

Founded: Jan 26, 1966
Club Members: 2,313
Nickname: Chemie
Coach: Sreto Ristic
Captain: Jonas Nietfeld

DDR Oberliga Champions: 1
FDGB-Pokal: 2
Regionalliga Nord: 1
Oberliga Süd: 1
Landespokal Sachsen-Anhalt Winner: 10

Website: www.hallescherfc.de

Like many of the former GDR clubs, Hallescher FC's history is far from linear with a constant flux of splits, mergers, dissolutions and name changes - not to mention a more than fair share of real tragedy. But, essentially all of Halle's football clubs can trace their origins back to the formation of Hallescher Fußbal Club Wacker 1900 (also known as Wacker Halle) at the turn of the 20th Century.

Having established themselves as the dominant team in the Saale district, Wacker Halle - along with other clubs from the federal states of Saxony, Saxony-Anholt and Thuringa - competed in the Mitteldeutsche Fußball Meisterschaft  (Central German Football Championship) and lifted the title in 1921 and 1928.

After the Nazi rise to power, football was restructured in Germany with the creation of the Gauliga in 1933 which funnelled clubs into 16 (later to become 18) regional divisions and Wacker won the inaugural Gauliga Mitte  before making it to the National Championship semi-finals the following season. The Gauliga system only lasted for 11 years however before the end of the Second World War, the fall of the Nazi regime and the subsequent Soviet occupation led to all sports clubs being forced to disband - and Wacker Halle were no more. 

With no team to support, the city were on the look-out for an 'ideologically safe' representative - one that didn't have any links to the Nazis as the Soviets intensified their efforts to stamp out fascism. A new club called SG Halle Glaucha (SG stands for 'Sports Community') rose from the ashes in 1946 before changing its name to SG Freiimfelde Halle a couple of years later. In 1949 however, having won the Saxony-Anhalt Championship, Freiimfelde's players suddenly upped sticks and joined ZSG Union Halle - promptly winning the Eastern Zone Championship final with a resounding 4-1 victory over SG Fortuna Erfurt in Dresden.

That year, ZSG Union became one of the founding member clubs of the top-flight DDR-Oberliga and not long after finishing their debut campaign in a strong 5th place came another name change - this time to BSG Turbine Halle. The club lifted silverware in 1952 when they won the DDR-Oberliga ahead of SG Volkspolizei Dresden and defending champions BSG Chemie Leipzig, but form tailed off after title winning coach Alfred Schultz and star players like Otto Knefler defected to the west in 1953. The state - who had total control of everyday life including football - also decided that performances on the field hadn't been good enough and that the fix to the 'problem' would be the formation of yet another club - SC Chemie Leuna Halle - on the 18th September 1954. In a move that foreshadowed the swallowing up of east German football into the west post-1989, the new club (linked to the Chemical industry) were given Turbine's best footballers and its place in the Oberliga, leaving those left behind to fend for themselves as Turbine subsequently plummeted down the leagues.

After winning their first FDGR-Pokal in 1956, there was another name change in 1958 and as SC Chemie Halle they enjoyed moderate success in terms of league position before lifting another FDGR-Pokal in 1962 with a 3-1 victory over SG Dynamo Berlin. It wasn't long however before the trigger-happy state authorities were introducing yet more reforms in a politically-charged move intended to increase the standards of football in the east, leading to yet another case of out with the 'not-so-old' and in with ... a new club. By 1966 therefore, SC Chemie Halle had been replaced with Hallescher FC Chemie (also known as Chemie Halle). 

After a few seasons of middle-order ranking, the club had their best Oberliga season in 1970-71, finishing third behind SG Dynamo Dresden and Carl Zeiss Jena to book themselves a place in the UEFA Cup the following year. It should have been the high point in Chemie's history but tragically it was the catalyst for an event which shocked European football and brought a terrible human cost for the club.

Drawn in the opening round against PSV Eindhoven, they performed valiantly in the first leg holding the Dutch giants to a goalless draw at the Kurt Wabbel Stadion. The second leg, though, never took place.

In the early hours of 28th September 1971, a fire broke out in the Hotel 't Silveren Seepaerd in Eindhoven where the Chemie team were staying before the return match the following evening. With the ground floor ablaze and no conventional means of escape available to those trapped on the upper floors, rescuers were forced to improvise and held out bed sheets tied together for guests to jump on to from windows on the second and third floors. Most of the Chemie party escaped this way but sadly not all. Erhard Mosert, a 20 year old squad player, broke his leg after jumping and the outcome for 21 year old midfielder Wolfgang Hoffman was worse still after he misjudged his leap and crashed through a skylight. He died in the fall. Chemie players Volker Jany and Klaus Urbanczyk bravely stayed inside the burning building to help people escape with Urbanczyk in particular suffering terrible injuries which required an emergency blood transfusion and the amputation of part of his right leg.

11 people died in the fire and 19 others were injured. One of the PSV players at the time was Guus Hiddink and on the 35th anniversary of the tragedy in 2006, he was instrumental in organising a remembrance match in Germany between Hallescher FC (the modern day incarnation of Hallescher FC Chemie) and the PSV Eindhoven team he managed at the time. 

Chemie never got the opportunity to put the ghosts of 1971 to rest but remained a solid DDR-Oberliga side - spending all but four seasons in the top-flight 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 Hallescher FC, the club began the post-reunification era in Bundesliga.2 but a number of key players and staff had already seized the opportunity to head for better-paid gigs in the west and it wasn't long before the club had begun a slide into the lower tiers - ending up in the fifth-tier Verbandsliga Sachsen Anhalt by the 1995-96 season. 

Struggles on the pitch however were put into perspective when tragedy struck the club again on 26th September 1997. Ahead of the first city derby (Stadtderby) against VfL Halle 96 in many a year, an excited crowd had gathered at the Kurt Wabbel Stadion and to mark the occasion a parachute team was supposed to land on the pitch before kick-off with the match ball. However, something went badly wrong. Matthias Becker was carrying the flags of both teams but his parachute failed to open properly and with the ropes knotted he fell towards the ground, striking a number of people queuing for tickets at the Badkurve corner of the stadium. Four people died in the accident including Becker and an 18 year old youth team goalkeeper for Hallescher FC. 

Recent years have seen a return to form for the club and in 2011 Hallescher finally returned to professional football for the first time in 20 years after beating Holstein Kiel and RB Leipzig to the Regionalliga Nord title. Today, the Leuna Chemie Stadion hosts 3.Liga football and although the focus is success on the pitch, off it there's a real sense of unity between club and supporter having been drawn together by their complex and sometimes tragic history.