TheViktoria, formerly spelledVictoria, is a Germanassociation football trophy which was awarded to theGerman champions from1903 to1944. It is modelled onVictoria, the Roman goddess of victory, winged and flinging a wreath. Thus it is the smaller reproduction of a life size sculpture to be found inBerlin'sOld National Gallery.
TheVictoria was awarded to theGerman Football Association, theDFB, in 1900 to commemorate Germany's participation in the1900 Summer Olympics which were held alongside the1900 World Fair inParis.[1]
Originally it was meant as a trophy for both the German association football andrugby unionchampions but it was first awarded to the inaugural German football championsVfB Leipzig on 31 May 1903. After 1903 it was annually given to the German champions except during theFirst World War when the competition was halted. The last club to receive the trophy wasDresdner SC in 1944 after which it went missing in the final stages of theSecond World War.[1]
In post-Second World War Germany a new trophy had to be commissioned to replace the missingVictoria, theMeisterschale, when the German championship resumed in1948, which was available from1949 onwards.[2] The trophy resurfaced after theGerman reunification, with its whereabouts in the time between remaining obscured, with theories ranging from the trophy being kept by theEast German government to it being hidden in a cellar inEast Berlin,[3] and was kept at theDFB headquarters inFrankfurt until it was relocated to the newGerman football museum inDortmund in 2015.[1][4]