Hamburger Sport-Verein e. Though the current HSV was founded in June from a merger of three earlier clubs, it traces its origins to 29 September when the first of the predecessors, SC Germania , was founded. The team's most successful period was from the mids until the mids when, in addition to several domestic honours, they won the —77 European Cup Winners' Cup and the —83 European Cup.
Up until the —18 Bundesliga season , which found the team relegated for the first time in history, HSV's football team had the distinction of being the only team that had played continuously in the top tier of the German football league system since the founding of the club at the end of World War I. It was subsequently the only team that had played in every season of the Bundesliga since its foundation in The club colours are officially blue, white and black but the home kit of the team is white jerseys and red shorts.
The team's most common nickname is "die Rothosen" the Red Shorts. As it is one of Germany's oldest clubs, it is also known as der Dinosaurier the Dinosaur. Pauli , with whom they contest the Hamburg derby. HSV is notable in football as a grassroots-oriented organisation which places strong emphasis on youth development. The club had a team in the Women's Bundesliga from to but it was demoted to Regionalliga level because of financial problems.
Other club sections include badminton , baseball , basketball , bowling , boxing , cricket , darts , ice hockey , field hockey , golf , gymnastics , handball , and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation exercises.
HSV is one of the biggest sports clubs in Germany with over 84, members total in all its sections, [ 2 ] and according to Forbes it is among the 20 largest football clubs in the world. This was the first of three clubs that merged on 2 June to create HSV in its present form. The merger came about because the three clubs had been severely weakened by the impact of the First World War on manpower and finance, and they could not continue as separate entities.
