History

From yesterday and tomorrow – the USG through the years

Dear friends, supporters and members of the USG Chemnitz e. V., dear sports comrades,

our new letterhead and its design are outward signs of a new era for our club, which can, however, rightly point out that it has always been "… more than a club" for the people of Chemnitz and the university, even in its origins. There is evidence of this since the beginnings of local university sports in the Alemannia student association at the Chemnitz Higher Trade School in the 1980s, through the founding of the "Academic Gymnastics and Sports Club (ATSV)" at the Chemnitz Academy of Technology in 1922, to the entry in the official register and accreditation as "USG Chemnitz e. V." with the LSB Saxony in 1991. From that point on, the largest sports community in the city, now again called "Chemnitz", was its largest registered club for many years and among the 100 largest clubs of the DOSB and among the TOP10 of the LSB Saxony.

Dear friends, supporters and members of the USG Chemnitz e. V., dear sports comrades,

Our new letterhead and its design are outward signs of a new era for our club, which can, however, rightly point out that it has always been "...more than a club" for the people of Chemnitz and the university, even in its origins. There is evidence of this since the beginnings of local university sports in the Alemannia student association at the Chemnitz Higher Trade School in the 1980s, through the founding of the "Academic Gymnastics and Sports Club (ATSV)" at the Chemnitz Academy of Technology in 1922, to the entry in the official register and accreditation as "USG Chemnitz e. V." with the LSB Saxony in 1991. From that point on, the largest sports community in the city, now again called "Chemnitz", was its largest registered club for many years and among the 100 largest clubs of the DOSB and among the TOP10 of the LSB Saxony.

But history was not without setbacks: Due to the bloodletting of the Second World War and the ban on non-aligned clubs such as ATSV Chemnitz by the Nazi regime, club sports at the Academy of Technology came to a temporary standstill in 1942. About a decade later, sports enthusiasts such as the unforgettable Fritz Bretschneider, who obtained permission from the then commander of the Soviet Army to use the rooms of today's university cafeteria on the Street of Nations for boxing, breathed new life into university sports. When an exchange with athletes from Bonn finally came up, competitive teams in football and athletics were quickly formed, which reactivated club sports under the umbrella of the "University Sports Association (HSG) Motor Science Karl-Marx-Stadt", which was hastily founded in 1953.

Dr. Karl-Heinz Ludwig, who came to the University of Mechanical Engineering (HfM) as a legal advisor in 1958, proved to be a stroke of luck. He was not only a good hammer thrower, but also devoted himself to the development of sports at the university and eventually took over as chairman of the board of the HSG. When Jürgen Weber, the first student, headed the football department (1960) and Werner Richter, the head of the university's student sports department, finally worked to expand the HSG, things started to move forward. Gerhart Behnert and Erich Storm, whose work laid the foundations for basketball in Chemnitz and USG football, are also unforgettable. By 1967, the number of HSG members had grown to over 250 athletes thanks to them.