HSV in its club statute recognises the founding of SC Germania as its own date of origin. This was the first of three clubs that merged on 2 June 1919 to create HSV in its present form.
Hamburger Sport-Verein (HSV) traces its origin to the merger of Der Hohenfelder Sportclub and Wandsbek-Marienthaler Sportclub on 29 September 1887 to form Sport-Club Germania Hamburg, usually referred to as SC Germania. HSV is one of the biggest sports clubs in Germany with over 84,000 members in all its departments and stated by Forbes to have been among the 20 largest football clubs in the world. These departments represent about 10% of the club membership. Other club departments include badminton, baseball, basketball, bowling, boxing, cricket, darts, ice hockey, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, handball, and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation exercises. The club had a team in the Women's Bundesliga from 2003 to 2012 but it was demoted to Regionalliga level because of financial problems. HSV is notable in football as a grassroots organisation with youth development a strong theme. Pauli, with whom they contest the Hamburg derby. HSV have rivalries with Werder Bremen, with whom they contest the Nordderby, and Hamburg-based FC St. As it is one of Germany's oldest clubs, it is also known as der Dinosaurier (the Dinosaur). The team's most common nickname is "die Rothosen" (the Red Shorts). The club colours are officially blue, white and black but the home kit of the team is white jerseys and red shorts. HSV play their home games at the Volksparkstadion in Bahrenfeld, a western district of Hamburg. To date, HSV's last major trophy was the 1986–87 DFB-Pokal. The outstanding players of this period were Horst Hrubesch, Manfred Kaltz, and Felix Magath, all of whom were regulars in the West German National Team. The team's most successful period was from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s when, in addition to several domestic honours, they won the 1976–77 European Cup Winners' Cup and the 1982–83 European Cup. HSV has won the German national championship six times, the DFB-Pokal three times and the League Cup twice. It was consequently also the only team that had played in every season of the Bundesliga since its foundation in 1963. Until 2018, when the team were relegated for the first time in history, HSV's football team had the distinction of being the only team that had played continuously in the top tier of the German football league system since the founding of the club at the end of World War I. Although the current HSV was founded in June 1919 from a merger of three earlier clubs, it officially traces its origin to 29 September 1887 when the first of the predecessors, SC Germania, was founded. ( German: ( listen)), commonly known as Hamburger SV ( pronounced ( listen)), Hamburg ( pronounced ( listen)) or HSV ( pronounced ( listen)), is a German sport club based in Hamburg, its largest branch being its football department.