Major honours
The only club to have reached the top of Europe both as an East German side and after reunification. Founded on March 1, 1955, it plays at the 8,000-seat GETEC Arena. It won Europe's top club competition in 1978 and 1981 as an East German club, and again in 2002, 2023 and 2025 as a united-Germany club, for five titles overall. Its domestic haul adds ten East German Oberliga titles to four Bundesliga titles (2001, 2022, 2024, 2026). Its late-1990s and early-2000s revival was led by Stefan Kretzschmar, one of the sport's biggest public stars, and Iceland's Olafur Stefansson. From the 2020s onward it returned to Europe's top tier, winning the IHF Super Globe three years running from 2021 to 2023, and reclaimed the Champions League by beating Fuchse Berlin 32-26 in the 2025 Cologne FINAL4 final.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The matchup with Fuchse Berlin, which still carries traces of the old East-West divide, is the sharpest rivalry, extended onto the European stage when the two met in the 2025 Champions League final. In the Bundesliga, the title race with Kiel has long been the other central axis.