BVB 09 Founding

Lore & Background

The club was founded on 19 December 1909 by a group of young men unhappy with the Catholic church-sponsored Trinity Youth, where they played football under the guidance of the local parish priest. The priest, Father Dewald was blocked at the door when he tried to break up the organising meeting being held in a room of the local pub, Zum Wildschütz. The founders were Franz and Paul Braun, Henry Cleve, Hans Debest, Paul Dziendzielle, Franz, Julius and Wilhelm Jacobi, Hans Kahn, Gustav Müller, Franz Risse, Fritz Schulte, Hans Siebold, August Tönnesmann, Heinrich and Robert Unger, Fritz Weber and Franz Wendt. The name Borussia is Latin for Prussia but was taken from Borussia beer from the nearby Borussia brewery in Dortmund. The team began playing in blue and white striped shirts with a red sash, and black shorts. In 1913, they donned the black and yellow stripes for the first time.

In Their Own Story

Rain lashed against the cobblestones outside the 'Poststraße' pub, but inside, the air hung heavy with pipe smoke and a fierce, restless energy. Hans Decker, barely seventeen, slammed his hand onto the scarred wooden table, instantly silencing the murmurs of the fifteen young men huddled around him. 'We are done running in circles while they play rugby,' he declared, his voice cracking through the din like a whip. 'Tonight, we forge our own path.' As the clock struck midnight on December 19, 1909, the ink dried on a document that would shatter the local status quo. In that dimly lit room, they ceased to be just neighborhood boys; they became Borussia.

Reader's Guide

Borussia Dortmund is the second most decorated German football team; domestically, they have eight league championships, five DFB-Pokals, and six DFL-Supercups. Internationally, they won the UEFA Champions League in 1997, the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1966, and the Intercontinental Cup in 1997, in addition, to being the runners-up in the Champions League in 2013 and 2024 and UEFA Europa League (formerly the UEFA Cup) in 1993 and 2002. Since 1974, Dortmund have played their home games at the Westfalenstadion; the stadium is the largest in Germany, the Yellow Wall, a standing terrace in the South Stand, is the largest of its kind in Europe, and Dortmund has the highest average attendance of any association football club in the world.

Did You Know?

• The club was founded by exactly 18 football players from Dortmund.
• The club's official name from the start included '09' and 'Dortmund'.
• Dortmund is the largest sports club by membership in Germany after FC Bayern Munich, with about 218,000 members.
• The club also has a women's handball team.