On April 18, 1897, the first international match on German ground took place in Hamburg in which a team of selection of the Danish Football Association defeated a selection team from the Hamburg-Altona Soccer Association 5-1.
Between the years 1899 to 1901, before the creation of a national team the world saw five fixtures among Germany with English selection teams. These were not officially recognised in any official way by the respective country's soccer association (in part due to the fact that England had an amateur side that was an overflow team or the B side). The five matches all ended in massive defeats for the Germany teams which included a loss of 12-0 to England at White Hart Lane in September 1901. 8 years following the formation of the German Football Association (DFB) in 1900 the first match that was officially played for the Germany national team held on the 5th April 1908 against Switzerland in Basel in Basel, with the Swiss winning 5-3.
The second match that took place between England Amateurs as well as Germany took place in the month of March 1909 at the White House Ground in Oxford which resulted in Germany's most significant official loss to date, 9-0 (this time, the game was deemed officially by DFB and not by the FA also due to the fact that the team was amateur). These early clashes were the basis for the long-running competition between these two sides, one of the longest-running and longest-running soccer rivalries on the planet.
Julius Hirsch was the first Jewish player to play for the Germany national football team which was formed in 1911. Hirsch had four goals scored to help Germany in a match against Netherlands on 1912 making him the very first German with four goals scored in one game.
Gottfried Fuchs scored a record-breaking world record of 10 goals for Germany in a win of 16-0 against Russia in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm 1 July. He was becoming the highest scoring player during the tournament. His record for the international stage was not broken until 2001, when the Australian team of Archie Thompson scored 13 goals in a 31-0 win over American Samoa. The 27-year-old was Jewish He was Jewish, and the German Football Association erased all reference to his name from their records between 1933 between 1933 and 1945. In the year 2016, he was the highest German scorer in one game.
The first match following World War I in 1920 and the first game following World War II in 1950 in the year 1950, when Germany was still barred from all international competitions and the first game in 1990 featuring former East German players were all against Switzerland also. Germany's first title as a champion was actually taken home in Switzerland in 1954.
The players were chosen by the DFB in the absence of no coach who was a part of the team. First manager for the Germany national team was Otto Nerz, a school teacher from Mannheim who held the position from 1926 until 1936. [31 The German FA was unable to afford travel to Uruguay for the inaugural World Cup staged in 1930 during the Great Depression, but finished third in the 1934 World Cup in their first appearance in the tournament. After a disappointing performance in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Sepp Herberger was appointed coach. In 1937, he assembles an Olympic team that was later called"The Breslau Elf (the Breslau Eleven) in the honor of their 8-0 win against Denmark at the time in the German city Breslau, Lower Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland).
Following the time that Austria was made part of Germany during the Anschluss of March 1938, the Austria the national side - which was one of the best teams in Europe in the 1930s because of their professionalism - was disbanded , despite having been selected for the 1938 World Cup. Nazi officials demanded that five or six former Austrian players from the teams Rapid Vienna, Austria Vienna as well as First Vienna FC, to be part of in the "all-German" team at brief notice as a display of unity for reasons of political power. In 1938, at the World Cup that began on 4 June, the "united" Germany national team had only one draw against Switzerland and was defeated in the replay by 2-4 the face of a hostile crowd that gathered in Paris, France. This early exit is the nation's most embarrassing World Cup result, and only one of two times the team was not able to advance beyond to the stage of group play (the following would not happen until the 2018 World Cup).
In World War II, the team took part in over 30 international matches between September 1939 to November 1942. The games for the national team were later stopped, since the majority of players were required to join the army. A lot of players of the national team were brought together under the guidance of coach Herberger in the role of Rote Jager, thanks to the efforts of an air force officer who was trying to safeguard the players from the most risky combat.