Karlsruher SC

A succession of mergers

The most successful of these ancestral clubs was Karlsruher Fussball Club Phönix, formed on 6 June 1894 by dissatisfied gymnastics club Karlsruher Turngemeinde members. They quickly became a strong regional side, playing in the Südkreis-Liga, and won the national title in 1909, defeating defending champions Viktoria 89 Berlin 4–2 in the championship final that season. In 1912, Phönix merged with KFC Alemannia, established in 1897, to create KFC Phönix (Phönix Alemannia).

It was as Phönix Karlsruhe that the club joined the Gauliga Baden, one of 16 top-flight divisions created in the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich. They slipped from the first division for a single season in 1936, but returned to compete as a mediocre side over the next several years. In the 1943–44 season, Karlsruhe played with Germania Durlach as the combined wartime side named KSG (Kriegssportgemeinschaft) Phönix/Germania Karlsruhe. After World War II in 1946, Phönix re-emerged to compete in the newly formed first division Oberliga Süd, finishing 15th in their first season there. The club was relegated the following season.

Two other threads in the evolution of KSC were the formation of FC Mühlburg in 1905 out of 1. FV Sport Mühlburg (founded in 1890) and Viktoria Mühlburg (founded in 1892), and the merger of FC Germania (founded in 1898) and FC Weststadt (founded in 1902) to form VfB Karlsruhe in 1911. FC Mühlburg and VfB Karlsruhe would, in turn, merge to form VfB Mühlburg in 1933. The group of clubs which came together to form VfB Mühlburg were an undistinguished lot, sharing just one season of upper-league play between them. The new side, however, started to compete in the first-division Gauliga Baden immediately after the league was established in 1933.

A lower-table side through the 1930s, VfB's performance improved considerably in the following decade. As war overtook the country, the Gauliga Baden was sub-divided at various times into a number of more local city-based circuits, and the team was able to earn three second-place finishes in divisional play. The Gauliga Baden collapsed in 1944–45 after playing a significantly reduced schedule in which many teams, including Mühlburg, were unable to compete. After the war the club slipped from top-flight competition until earning promotion to the Oberliga Süd in 1947. They generally competed as a mid-table side here with the exception of a strong performance in 1951 when they narrowly missed an advance to the national championship rounds after earning a third-place result just a single point behind SpVgg Fürth.

The formation of Karlsruher SC

KFC Phoenix and VfB Mühlburg united to form the Karlsruher Sport-Club Mühlburg-Phönix e. V., on 16 October 1952 and the new team earned good results throughout the remainder of the decade. In 1955, they beat Schalke 04 3–2 to win the DFB-Pokal, and repeated the success next year with a 3–1 win over Hamburger SV. That season, they also made an appearance in the national final, where they lost 2–4 to Borussia Dortmund. KSC was Oberliga Süd champion in 1956, 1958 and 1960, as well as runner-up in the DFB-Pokal in 1960, when they lost the final match 2–3 to Borussia Mönchengladbach. Their record earned them admission as one of sixteen founding clubs into Germany's new professional football league, the Bundesliga, when it began play in 1963.

Karlsruhe struggled in the top flight, never managing better than a 13th-place finish over five seasons before finally being demoted to the second-division Regionalliga Süd. Over the next three seasons, the team earned a first-place finish as well as two-second-place finishes there but were unable to advance in the promotion rounds. After the 1974 formation of the 2. Bundesliga, which consisted of two divisions at the time, KSC finished first in the 2. Bundesliga Süd and returned to the top flight for the 1975–76 season but were able to stay up for only two years. They next returned to the first division in 1980, where they spent four seasons before being sent down again. After a two-year absence, they were promoted back to the Bundesliga in 1987 to begin an extended stay.

The Schäfer era

Under the guidance of new coach Winfried Schäfer, KSC's return to the top flight was marked with some success as for the first time, the team managed to work its way out of the bottom half of the league table. In the 1993–94 season, the club had a successful run in the UEFA Cup, going out in the semi-finals on away goals to Austria Salzburg after beating, in turn, PSV, Valencia, Bordeaux and Boavista. Their 7–0 second-round victory over Valencia, a top team in the Spanish La Liga at the time and in historical terms as well, might be considered the high point of the club's history in its centennial year. Edgar "Euro Eddy" Schmitt scored 4 goals and became a club legend. Between 1992 and 1997, the club was ranked in the single digits in six consecutive Bundesliga seasons, and participated in two more UEFA Cups, reaching the third round both in the 1996–97 and 1997–98 seasons, being eliminated from the competition after losing their second-leg matches to Brøndby and Spartak Moscow respectively. In 1995, KSC won the DFB-Hallenpokal, an indoor football tournament that was traditionally held during winter breaks of the Bundesliga seasons. They also played in the final of the DFB-Pokal in 1996 but lost 0–1 to 1. FC Kaiserslautern.