Sparta Lichtenberg

Two clubs share the Lichtenberg name, and until 2023 they had not met in the league since 2016. When the derby against SV Lichtenberg 47 came back onto the fixture list, it did so because Sparta had won the Berlin-Liga the season before and gone up to the Oberliga Nordost.

Sparta came out of the workers' sports movement — Wilhelm Wendt and eleven others put it together in Lichtenberg in 1911. It played in the Märkische Spiel-Vereinigung, then from 1928 in the communist Rotsport organisation. Between 1927 and 1931 it took the MSV-Ostkreis title five years running.

The Nazis dissolved the club in 1933. Members kept playing under the cover name SC Empor Lichtenberg. Werner Seelenbinder, the wrestler killed in a Nazi prison, is among the anti-fascist resistance figures tied to the club, along with Hans Zoschke and Erwin Nöldner.

It won the district cup in 1977. After reunification the fall was steep — down to the eighth tier by the early 1990s, back into the Verbandsliga Berlin only in 2001.

The ground on Fischerstraße was renamed the Paul-Kalkbrenner-Sportfeld in 2025. Kalkbrenner, the producer and DJ, grew up in the district, played years of amateur football here and put on a concert on the pitch in 2015.

The 2022/23 double push also brought a Berlin Cup final, lost 1:3 to TuS Makkabi Berlin.