50 years of being a sporting home
Kreissportbund Märkischer Kreis e.V. celebrates anniversary
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Standing from left: Marco Voge, Georg Schebesta, Anja Esser, Günther Nülle, Claudia Wrede, Markus Kisler, Monika Hermanns, Klaus Scharf, Heike Jarosch-Groß, Sebastian Pahlke, Brigitte Schmitz-Gerau, and Christian Schweitzer.
Front row from left: Solveig Schwiederski, Cedric Kleymann, and Kirsten Nölle.
Photo: Oliver Bergmann / Iserlohner Kreisanzeiger
As part of the municipal reorganization of Westphalia, the Märkischer Kreis was founded in its current form on January 1, 1975. In addition to many incorporations, there was also a forward-looking merger from a sporting perspective. On April 18, 1975, the sub-organizations that had previously operated at the city level merged to form Kreissportbund Märkischer Kreis e.V. (KSB for short), bringing 420 sports clubs under one roof at that time. This umbrella organization for organized sports has become more professional over the past 50 years and now offers 506 clubs (as of 2025) a sporting home.
Even though those responsible for the KSB today consider the founding of the district as the “big brother” to be the basis for their own anniversary, there is also an alternative timeline according to which the “Stadtverband für Leibesübungen Lüdenscheid” (Lüdenscheid City Association for Physical Exercise), founded in 1946, could have been the origin of the organization. A commemorative publication from 1986 states that sport, based on the principle of fairness, “can be the moral foundation of all action” and thus has a “socio-political significance that goes beyond leisure activities and health services.” Not much has changed in this basic view over the years. In fact, its importance has increased in times of increasing digitalization. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that sport is no longer part of the Ministry of the Interior at the political level, but that a separate Minister of State for Sport and Volunteering has been appointed to the Chancellery. This welcome institutional realignment is no coincidence. All the federations and associations organized under the Deutschen Olympischen Sportbundes (DOSB) work tirelessly to promote the interests of sport. The KSB is headed by Landessportbund NRW. The KSB oversees the respective city and municipal sports associations of the individual local authorities and, of course, the numerous sports clubs. This may seem very convoluted to outsiders, and the structure of organized sports is clearly hierarchical, but in essence, the focus is always on cooperation and mutual support.
With around 25.2 million members in sports clubs nationwide (as of 2024), sports are one of the most important pillars of society and certainly a reflection of society. The Kreissportbund Märkischer Kreis e.V. (Märkischer Kreis District Sports Association) therefore attaches great importance to focusing its work on current challenges and has recently concentrated its efforts on areas such as the prevention of sexualized violence in sport and sport as a means of combating loneliness.
A study commissioned by the Landessportbund NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia State Sports Federation) at the University of Koblenz recently took a closer look at the Märkischer Kreis, among other areas, to examine membership trends in sports clubs. The evaluation provides important insights for the future: in order to counteract the predicted decline in membership, it is particularly important to target adults — especially women. Many sports clubs are so-called single-sport clubs with only one department, and especially in smaller communities, it could help to expand the range of activities on offer in order to appeal to more people. And the KSB's task is simply to initiate these processes so that the next 50 years of history can also be written.
