GWD Minden

Twice a season the Mühlenkreisderby brings Minden to a standstill, GWD against TuS N-Lübbecke, two clubs from the same stretch of the Weser separated by little more than a river crossing. Further east there is the Ostwestfalen-Derby with TBV Lemgo, less local but sharper on the table.

GWD grew out of Dankersen, the district that gave the club its second name, and its green and white have stood for something beyond a local fixture. Between 1967 and 1971 Minden won three German field-handball titles and, from 1968 to 1970, three straight IHF European Cups in that discipline, a run no rival in the region matched. The switch to the indoor game brought two Handball-Bundesliga championships, in 1971 and 1977, and three DHB-Pokal wins in the second half of the 1970s, the first of them against TSV Rintheim in the inaugural final of 1975.

What has followed since has been less golden and more elastic. Minden has gone down from the Bundesliga four times — 1981, 1986, 2018 and 2024 — and come back up just as often. The Kampa-Halle, holding 4,059, has stayed the fixed point through all of it.

No name attaches to the club more than Herbert Lübking's, who played for GWD from 1949 to 1970 and is remembered simply as its legend, spanning the field-handball years and into the switch to indoor. Talant Dujshebaev passed through at the turn of the millennium, and more recently Juri Knorr came through the youth ranks before moving on.