"It all started in 1987. With a cigarette from the West in a pub in Köpenick. I was in the capital city of the GDR with Gerhard Zimmermann (we were both members of a 'Friends of Berlin' association called, Bund der Berliner und Freunde Berlins e.V., the district chapter Dillingen on the Danube). We'd also come to explore this part of Berlin. We ended up in a bar and offered the man working there a cigarette – it turned out he was also a member of the 'BSG HO Marzahn' football team. From then on, we regularly met up with our new acquaintance in East Berlin.
And on 9 November 1989 the Wall finally came down. The footballers from the 'BSG HO Marzahn' team immediately accepted an invitation to take part in an indoor football match in Gundelfingen on the Danube on 16 December 1989. Everyone was so excited! It was their first visit to Bavaria, their first match against a French side (from Louverne and La Chapelle-Anthenaise). The crowd cheered every time the Marzahn players initiated a move.
Our amateur team 'FC Silo 66 Lauingen' followed suit in May 1990 when we took up an invitation from the 'BSG HO Marzahn'. The match for the 'Marzahn 80-Cup', which took place on the sports pitch on the Allee der Kosmonauten in Marzahn, was our first match in the Eastern part of the city. We came fourth and the best player was one of us 'Westerners' from Lauingen.
The events didn't just mark the beginning of a friendship between people from the East and West, and which have lasted to this very day; rather, in June 1999, following several other sporting encounters, a town twinning was founded between the Berlin district of Marzahn and the small Bavarian town of Lauingen (Danube)."
Hubert Götz
