Dessauer-Rosslauer HV

Dessau-Roßlau sits either side of the Elbe, and for a city built on Bauhaus tourism and little else in the way of top-flight sport, the handball club carries more weight than its 2. Bundesliga standing might suggest. The name Dessau-Roßlauer HV dates only to 2006, when Dessauer HV merged with TV Roßlau, but the game had been played there since 1898, when Dessauer FC von 1898 took root and later grew into BSG ZAB Dessau — a side strong enough to reach the 1. Handball-Bundesliga in the 1991/92 season before relegation and a financial rebuild forced it back to a re-founding as Dessauer HV in 1996.

The club nearly did not survive its own rebirth. In 2007, with the license in doubt, supporters raised €290,000 to keep it running. Relegation followed in 2011 after nineteen years in the second tier, but Dessau-Roßlau won the 3. Liga North in 2016 to climb back, slipped down again in 2019, and returned within a year through the quota rule. The 2022/23 campaign, a third-place finish, stands as the best the merged club has managed.

They play at the Anhalt-Arena, in front of "die Biber" — the Beavers, in blue and white. The squad has leaned on foreign imports over the years, among them the Argentine goalkeeper Matías Carlos Schulz, brought in to shore up a position that decides tight second-division games.

The sharpest edge is local: the Mitteldeutsches Derby against HC Elbflorenz Dresden pulls in a way no other fixture does, with Anhalt Bernburg and SC Magdeburg completing a regional rivalry that has nothing to do with the table and everything to do with geography.