Schott Jena

Jena is a Thuringian city that has long made its living from glass and optics, and one glassworks, Schott AG, put a football side on the map alongside it. The club began in 1896, formed by the works' own employees. A football department followed in 1911, and the workers' name stuck: the club is still known as the Glassworkers.

The name on the shirt changed far more often than the trade. Through the East German decades the side was reorganised again and again, becoming BSG Otto Schott and later BSG Glas Jena, and by 1990 it had played under 10 different names. In the same years it won the Bezirksliga Gera three times, in 1986, 1989 and 1990.

The best-known afternoon came in 2013. That year the club won the Thuringia Cup, one of its five Thuringian championships, and the cup win sent it into the first round of the DFB-Pokal, the German Cup, against Hamburger SV. Schott held out for 72 minutes without conceding, and Hamburg then scored four without reply.

Five years later the club made a choice few make. In 2018 it dropped voluntarily from the NOFV-Oberliga to the Thüringenliga. It now plays at the Sportzentrum Oberaue, a ground for 2,000.

In a city with a far bigger football name, Schott's rival is the obvious one. FC Carl Zeiss Jena sit across the same town, and matches between them are called the Jena derby or the Stadt-Derby.