SC Dynamo Berlin


The Sports Club Dynamo Berlin was an East German sports club that existed from 1954 to 1991. It was the largest sports club of SV Dynamo, the sports association of the security agencies. The club was disbanded during the Peaceful Revolution and eventually succeeded by sports club SC Berlin.

Sporting spectrum

The sports club offered the following kinds of sport: team handball, athletics, gymnastics, cycling, speed skating, racewalking, figure skating, ice hockey, fencing, boxing, and volleyball. The football department was separated from the club in 1966 to form football club BFC Dynamo, which became the record champion of the DDR-Oberliga.

Dynamo-Sportforum

The Dynamo-Sportforum was a large multi-use sports complex in East Berlin that contained an athletic stadium, a gymnasium, a roller-skating hall, an ice rink, and a velodrome. The Sportforum is still in operation, now used by BFC Dynamo, SC Berlin as well as junior teams of Eisbären Berlin, among several other tenants.

Controversies surrounding the Sports Club

The case of doping

Two former SC Dynamo Berlin club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 1980, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances. Binus was sentenced in August, Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.

The Stasi and Erich Mielke

, the president of SV Dynamo, was also the head of the Stasi, the Secret Police of East Germany, from 1957 to 1989. The Stasi was widely regarded as one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. In 1989, the Stasi had 91,000 staff members and 174,000 unofficial collaborators.

End of East Germany

Following the Peaceful Revolution, the dissolving of the Stasi and SV Dynamo, the club was renamed 1. Polizei-Sportclub in March 1990. PSC was soon renamed 1. SC Berlin, which became SC Berlin between December 1990 and January 1991. SC Berlin has preserved several sections of SC Dynamo Berlin, while others became independent. The ice hockey section became ice hockey club EHC Dynamo Berlin in 1990, which was renamed Eisbären Berlin in 1992. SC Berlin had 2,500 members as of 2015.

Honours

SC Dynamo Berlin produced numerous well-known athletes, including Christoph Höhne, Ilona Slupianek, Karin Janz, Axel Peschel, Joachim Ziesche and Dietmar Peters, Helga Haase, and Barbara Krause.