Saturday's DFB Pokal final between Wolfsburg and Borussia Dortmund will be the 72nd such match. That is, of course, unless you're really fussy about these things and argue that it's the 73rd because the 1977 final between Cologne and Hertha Berlin went to a replay.
In England, the FA Cup enjoyed near mythical status for more than a century. It was different elsewhere, though. In the mid-1950s, for example, countries like Italy and Austria had stopped holding such competitions altogether.
Perhaps this explains why not very many of those 70-plus German Cup finals immediately spring to mind. Ask an average German fan in which year the final was contested by Schwarz-Weiss Essen and Borussia Neunkirchen and the answer you're most likely to get is: "Never, of course!" (It was in 1959.)
On the other hand, a few of German football's most iconic images come from cup finals. Such as the picture of a sobbing Lothar Matthaus after the 1984 game, in which he missed a penalty during the shootout between his team, Borussia Monchengladbach, and the club he had already signed for, Bayern Munich.
So, here are the five most memorable finals, excluding this 1984 match, not least because we covered that campaign in some detail weeks ago.
5. May 23, 1992 | Hannover 96 0(4)-(3)0 Borussia Monchengladbach
Eight years after the famous Matthaus miss, Gladbach became the first, and so far only, team to lose two German Cup finals on penalties. However, that's not the main reason this final made history. Rather, it's the fact that the trophy was won by a lower-division team for only the second time in history.
Or was it even the first time? There is some controversy over this question. In the first round proper of the 1969-70 cup campaign, second-division Offenbach defeated the Bundesliga side 1860 Munich and progressed. However, because of the World Cup in Mexico, the next four rounds of this competition were all played in July and August of 1970, after the end of the league season and during the summer break.
By this time, Offenbach had long since been promoted to the top flight. So when the team won the final on Aug. 29, 1970, against Cologne, Offenbach were technically a member of the Bundesliga, although some history books list them as a lower-division team.
In Hannover's case, though, there are no two ways about it. The team was a dyed-in-the-wool second-division side when goalkeeper Jorg Sievers became a club hero by saving two penalties in the shootout after two hours of football hadn't produced a single goal.
4. May 28 and May 30, 1977 | Cologne 2-1 (agg) Hertha Berlin
On the morning of the final, Cologne coach Hennes Weisweiler told the press, "Wolfgang Overath will play against Hertha today." That was newsworthy because, after 14 years and more than 400 league games for Cologne, Overath was finishing his career and had made only two appearances for the team in the previous two months.
Some people were afraid Weisweiler would humiliate the club icon by having him follow his last-ever game from the bench. As we shall see later, the coach was a bit of an expert when it came to benching departing star players. But this scenario was now averted, or so it seemed, and a relieved Overath said, "A win would be a great conclusion of my career."
But fate has a great sense of irony. The game in Hannover -- it wasn't until the mid-1980s that finals were always staged in Berlin -- finished 1-1 after extra time. Under the rules of the day, this necessitated a replay. Now Weisweiler, arguing the aging midfield maestro couldn't play two games in only three days, put Overath on the bench.
A fine flying header from Dieter Muller on 70 minutes won this game for Cologne. But Overath wasn't the only one who watched the celebrations with a sour expression on his face. Hertha had a club icon, too, in Erich Beer. Nine minutes before Muller's goal, Beer had scored what he felt was a good goal, only to have it chalked off for a supposed foul.
"We were robbed," Beer railed, while Hertha's president said, "If I didn't have an official function, I might use the word cheating."
3. Nov. 16, 1958 | Stuttgart 4-3 Fortuna Dusseldorf
It tells you how little glamour the cup had in those days that the final was staged in the relatively small Auestadion in Kassel. Or that only 200 Stuttgart fans were among the 28,000 spectators.
Maybe VfB's supporters were reluctant to travel with their team because Dusseldorf were considered the overwhelming favourites. If so, the 200 Stuttgart die-hards will have rubbed their eyes in disbelief mixed with delight during the first half.
Stuttgart dominated before the break, they wasted a penalty and had a goal disallowed for offside before finally taking a well-deserved lead. But favourites Fortuna must have regrouped during the interval, because they turned the game around with two goals between the 50th and the 52nd minute.
Only five minutes later, Fortuna's star striker Jupp Derwall -- the man who would one day coach West Germany -- was clear through to goal and only VfB's goalkeeper Gunter Sawitzki stood between him and what would surely have been the deciding goal. Sawitzki parried Derwall's powerful shot and five minutes later, Stuttgart equalised. Then they regained the lead. Ten minutes from time, Fortuna's Franz-Josef Wolfframm scored his second goal of the game to tie things again.
Never before had a final produced more than five goals; now the score was 3-3 and the game went to extra time. After 113 minutes, Stuttgart's new signing Lothar Weise headed home a free kick to become one of the few players who lifted a trophy in both East and West Germany. (Weise had been a member of the Erfurt team that won back-to-back league titles in the GDR.)
2. May 1, 1982 | Bayern Munich 4-2 Nurnberg
The game has been mentioned before in this column. That's because Bayern's towering centre-forward Dieter Hoeness suffered a serious cut in an aerial duel in the early stages and played the rest of the match with a blood-stained bandage.
It added considerable drama to a game that was explosive and spectacular to begin with. More than 2,000 policemen were on duty because the game was played on Labour Day, always a holiday with potential for unrest, and brought two sets of fans together who weren't exactly enamoured with each other.
Bayern went into the final as favourites, but Nurnberg's Austrian sweeper Reinhold Hintermaier opened the scoring with a tremendous strike from 35 yards. Shortly before the break, the Munich giants were hit on the counter and Werner Dressel made it 2-0. After the game, Bayern's star striker Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told the journalists, "During halftime, I hoped we might be able to come back despite playing hara-kiri football -- but I didn't really believe it."
What turned the game around was the bandaged head. In the second half, Hoeness set up Bayern's first goal, scored from close range by Rummenigge, and finally headed home the fourth. Sandwiched between these two unforgettable moments were the equaliser through Wolfgang Kraus on 65 minutes and Bayern's go-ahead goal scored by Paul Breitner from the spot seven minutes later.
Hoeness later admitted that he might have come off if it had been a normal league game. "My wife was very shocked [when she saw all that blood]," he told Kicker. "But I guess she knows that I wasn't going to do anything irresponsible."
1. June 23, 1973 | Borussia Monchengladbach 2-1 Cologne
In the same way in which the 1953 FA Cup Final has become "the Matthews final," this game is now "the Netzer final." Whenever talk turns to the match, people say, "Wasn't that when Gunter Netzer brought himself on and then scored the winning goal?" Yes, it was. But it was more.
The match between the two Rhineland rivals was barely two minutes old when Gladbach's Bernd Rupp ran past three opponents and chipped goalkeeper Gerhard Welz only to see Cologne's sweeper Bernd Cullmann clear the ball off the line. It set the tone for a match that produced so much goalmouth action that every highlight reel you see today is missing spectacular chances.
After only 10 minutes, television commentator Ernst Huberty remarked that "there have already been more gripping moments than in the entire international," referring to a friendly between Brazil and West Germany seven days earlier.
But despite this deluge of scoring opportunities, there were only two goals during the regular 90 minutes. Gladbach's Herbert Wimmer scored with a fine left-footed strike on 23 minutes, only for Herbert Neumann to equalise from 20 yards with five minutes left in the first half.
When Welz brilliantly saved a Jupp Heynckes penalty on the hour, more and more people began to sense that this thriller would go to extra time. And more and more eyes turned toward Netzer, who was sitting on the bench.
There were a number of reasons why Gladbach's coach Hennes Weisweiler wasn't playing his greatest star. Netzer had problems, both physically and mentally. A week before the game, his mother had unexpectedly died at only 61 years of age. Weisweiler also happened to be miffed about the fact Netzer had informed the club only two weeks before the final that he would be joining Real Madrid.
On the day of the final, the coach informed his playmaker he wouldn't see action in his last game for the club. Netzer went to his hotel room and packed his bags. According to his autobiography, he then went to the dining room and casually told the rest of the squad, "Well, I'm off. Take care, good luck for today and for the future."
Was he bluffing? It's unlikely. In a Netzer documentary, Wimmer recalls how Heynckes and Berti Vogts argued with Netzer for a long time, telling him he couldn't just walk out on them. At last, Netzer relented and drove to the stadium with the rest of the squad.
During the halftime break, Weisweiler walked over to Netzer. "You're coming on now," he said. Netzer looked up. "Me?" he replied. "No. No way." And so the two pigheaded men watched the second half from the sidelines, sitting at either end of Gladbach's bench.
During the interval before extra time, Netzer noted that Gladbach's young midfielder Christian Kulik was having cramps and couldn't continue. Netzer heard the fans chant his name. He took off his track top and walked over to Weisweiler. "Now I'm playing," Netzer said matter-of-factly and joined the team on the pitch. There was no reply from the coach.
Barely three minutes later, Netzer scored the winning goal with a left-footed first-time shot into the top corner. You couldn't make it up.