OSV Hannover is a German association football club based in the Oststadt district of

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...

History

The club was founded in 1923 as ''Freie Sportvereinigung Hannover Ost''. The club was dissolved in 1933 in the course of the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

regime's politically motivated reorganization of sport and football clubs throughout the country and re-constituted as ''Oststädter Sportverein Hannover''. In 1937, the club merged with the older side ''MTV Groß Buchholz'', which had been founded in 1923. After World War II the football side was associated with ''TuS Bothfeld 04'' until re-establishing themselves as an independent club in 1953. The club has an unremarkable history, noted only for three seasons spent in

Regionalliga Nord The Regionalliga Nord ( en, Regional League North) is the fourth tier of the German football league system in the states of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen and Hamburg. It is one of five leagues at this level, together with the Regional ...

from 1972 to 1974, and another two in the

2. Bundesliga The 2. Bundesliga ( ) is the second division of professional football in Germany. It was implemented 11 years after the founding of the Fußball-Bundesliga as the new second division for professional football. The 2. Bundesliga is ranked below ...

Nord in 1979 and 1980. ''OSV'' re-established a facility sharing partnership with ''TuS Bothfeld 04'' in the mid-1970s, and had a close brush with bankruptcy in the early 1980s. The club slipped into obscurity in the lower level local leagues, playing as far down as the Kreisliga Hannover-Stadt (IX) in 2003–05. In 2005, the executive board helped engineer a turnaround when they brought in Wolfgang Kirchner as manager and had former SV Arminia Hannover player Philip Menges join the team as player-coach. The club's fortunes improved greatly and they went through nearly two full seasons unbeaten at home. A championship in the eighth tier Bezirksklasse Hannover/4 led to promotion to the Bezirksliga Hannover (VII). With the league renamed to Landesliga the club today plays in the

Landesliga Hannover The Landesliga Hannover, called the ''Bezirksoberliga Hannover'' from 1979 to 1994 and 2006 to 2010,

External links

Official website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hannover, OSV Football clubs in Germany Football clubs in Lower Saxony Sport in Hanover German workers' football clubs Association football clubs established in 1923 1923 establishments in Germany 2. Bundesliga clubs