Since 1999 the team has primarily played tier III and IV football, but a second place-finish in the Regionalliga Nord secured Jena promotion to the 2. They won immediate promotion, and played for three more years at tier-II level. Their second-place finish in 1992 deteriorated into a 17th-place finish in 1994 and relegation to Regionalliga Nordost (III). They also captured East German Cups in 1972, 19, and appeared in the 1981 European Cup Winners' Cup Final, losing 2–1 to Dinamo Tbilisi.Īfter German reunification in 1990, Jena entered the 2. They took two more national titles in 19, but finished in second place another half-dozen times to sides such as Vorwärts Berlin, Dynamo Dresden and 1. The club was "re-founded" as FC Carl Zeiss Jena in January 1966, and became one of East Germany's "focus centres" for the development of players for the national side and a dominant side in the DDR-Oberliga.
Jena won its first honours with the capture of the FDGB-Pokal in 1960 and followed up with the East German national title in 1963. Renamed SC Motor Jena in 1954, they played their way back to the upper league by 1957. In 1950 the club became a founding member of the DDR Liga (II), and in their second season captured a divisional title to win promotion to the top-flight DDR Oberliga for a single-season appearance.
He made an early contribution to easing the plight of workers by introducing the 8-hour work day at the Zeiss plant, a milestone for labour during the late 19th century. In the aftermath of World War II, East German authorities tagged sports teams with the names of socialist heroes: Ernst Abbe was a local son and physicist associated with the Zeiss optical factory. Jena was reconstituted in June 1946 as SG Ernst Abbe Jena and, like many other clubs in East Germany, underwent a number of name changes: SG Stadion Jena (October 1948), SG Carl Zeiss Jena (March 1949), BSG Mechanik Jena (January 1951), BSG Motor Jena (May 1951) and SC Motor Jena (November 1954). In the immediate aftermath of the war, associations of all types (including sports and football clubs) were banned in Germany by the occupying Allied authorities.
Historical chart of Carl Zeiss Jena league performance after WWII After the 1943–44 season, the Gauliga Mitte broke up into a collection of city-based leagues as World War II overtook the area. This earned Jena entry to the national finals, but they performed poorly and were never able to advance out of preliminary-round group play. The team captured division titles in 1935, 1936, 1940, and 1941. SV Jena joined the Gauliga Mitte, one of 16 top-flight divisions formed in the reorganization of German football under the Third Reich. The club underwent name changes in 1911 to Fussball Club Carl Zeiss Jena e.V. The club was founded in May 1903 by workers at the Carl Zeiss AG optics factory as the company-sponsored Fussball-Club der Firma Carl Zeiss.