Schwarz-Weiß Essen is a German association football club based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The side has its origins in the gymnastics club Essener Turnerbund founded in 1881. A football department was formed in January 1900 and this became a separate entity within the club on 1 July 1974.
In 1933, the club joined the Gauliga Niederrhein, one of sixteen top flight divisions formed in the re-organization of German football under the Third Reich. They played at that level until being relegated in 1943, with their best results being a string of three consecutive second-place finishes between 1937 and 1940.
SWE returned to tier I football in 1951 in the Oberliga West, and except for spending the 1958, 1959, and 1961 seasons in the second division, played in the top flight until the 1963 formation of the Bundesliga, Germany's first professional football league.
Their moment of glory came in 1959 when a non-descript side beat Rot-Weiss Essen 1–0, Hertha BSC 6–3, and Hamburger SV 2–1 on their way to thrashing Borussia Neunkirchen 5–2 to take the DFB-Pokal. Their 1959 German Cup win made them the first ever second division side to win the trophy.
After 1963, Schwarz-Weiß played as a second-tier side in the Regionalliga West and 2. Bundesliga Nord into the late 1970s. They fell a point short of a place in the Bundesliga in 1967, finishing behind Borussia Neunkirchen in the league qualification rounds. In 1978, they descended into the then third division to the Oberliga Nordrhein and played in this league until it was disbanded in 2008. They became part of the new NRW-Liga after that and in 2012, when the latter was disbanded again, of the Oberliga Niederrhein.
In the past, the local derbies versus Rot-Weiß Essen were big events, sometimes followed by more than 30,000 fans. However, since Schwarz-Weiß's decline the rivalry has waned in importance.[1][2] Although often clouded in political terms, the "reds" were meant to be left-wing and the "blacks" right-wing, in reality there was no real distinction. The rivalry was more based on geography of the city, a north (RWE) versus south (SWE) city divide.[3]