SpVgg Gera was created in 1922 out of the merger of the predecessor associations
Allgemeinen Turngemeinde Gera and
1. VfR Gera. In 1936,
SpVgg was joined by
Sport Club Concordia Gera-Reuß to form
SV Gera 04. The new association included as part of its heritage the side
Sport Club Reuß which was established in 1904.
SV made its first appearance in top flight football in 1939 in the
Gauliga Mitte, one of sixteen upper divisions created in the 1933 re-organization of German football under the
Third Reich. However, their stay in first division competition was short-lived. After narrowly escaping relegation in the two seasons following their debut, they were sent down in 1943.
Postwar play in East Germany Like other most organizations in
Germany, including sports and football clubs,
Gera was dissolved at the end of
World War II by occupying Allied authorities. The club was re-established in 1945 as
SG Gera-Pforten and was renamed
BSG Gera-Süd in 1949. In October 1950 that club was joined by
BSG RFT Gera to form
BSG Mechanik Gera which underwent names changes to become
BSG Motor Gera in May 1951, and then
BSG Wismut Gera in March 1953. It was as
Gera-Süd that the club returned to first division play in inaugural season of
East Germany's
DDR-Oberliga in 1949. They managed only a weak 11th-place finish just two points clear of relegation, but enjoyed a successful run in the
FDGB-Pokal (East German Cup) advancing to the first ever Cup final against
BSG Waggonbau Dessau where they dropped a 0:1 decision. The club had a long list of Cup appearances over the next four decades, but never did better than an advance to the 1969 quarter finals.
Geras poor league play continued and the side was relegated in 1953 to the
DDR-Liga. They made two single season cameo appearances in the top flight in 1966 and 1977 and struggled to distant last place finishes on both occasions.
Post re-unification After
German re-unification in 1990, the club took on the name
FSV Wismut Gera and was seeded into the
NOFV-Oberliga Süd for the 1992 season. By 1996 they had slipped for the first time to fifth-tier play in the
Landesliga Thüringen. A division championship returned them to what was now the fourth-division Oberliga Nordost/Süd for one season in 1999. A three-year-long turn in the Landesliga Thüringen (V) ended in bankruptcy and demotion to the Bezirksliga Thüringen-4 (VII) in 2003, where the club played until 2007 and the merger that created the current-day club. At the end of the 2008–09 season, the club decided to revert to the name of
BSG Wismut Gera. The club had been playing in the tier-six
Thüringenliga since, finishing runners-up in 2014 and 2015. The latter earned the club promotion to the Oberliga after league champions
Wacker Nordhausen II declined promotion.
BSG decided to renounce participating any further in the Oberliga in 2019 and returned to the Thüringenliga. ==Honours==