Felix Dzerzhinsky
A controversy erupted in 2011 when it became publicly known that club president Dirk Zingler had been a member of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment for three years during his military service. Dirk Zingler had only two years before cancelled a sponsorship deal with the company International Sport Promotion (ISP) because the head of the board at the company had been a Stasi officer. The Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment was the paramilitary wing of the Stasi. Dirk Zingler has explained that he had sought to spend his military service in Berlin and that he was unaware beforehand that the regiment belonged to the Stasi. However, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment was an elite formation. It was not possible to apply for the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment. The Stasi selected who it thought fit to serve with the regiment. The regiment only accepted recruits that were "loyal to the line".