Early years (1900–65)

FC Bayern Munich was founded by members of a Munich gymnastics club (MTV 1879). When a congregation of members of MTV 1879 decided on 27 February 1900 that the footballers of the club would not be allowed to join the German Football Association (DFB), eleven members of the football division left the congregation and on the same evening founded Fußball-Club Bayern München. Within a few months Bayern achieved high-scoring victories against all local rivals and reached the semifinals of the 1900–01 South German championship. In the following years the club won some local trophies and in 1910–11 Bayern joined the newly founded "Kreisliga", the first regional Bavarian league. They won this league in its first year, but did not win it again until the beginning of World War I in 1914, which halted all football activities in Germany.

In the years after the war, Bayern won several regional competitions, before winning their first South German championship in 1926, an achievement repeated two years later. Their first national title was gained in 1932, when coach Richard "Little Dombi" Kohn led the team to the German championship by defeating Eintracht Frankfurt 2–0 in the final.

The advent of Nazism put an abrupt end to Bayern's development. The president and the coach, both of whom were Jewish, left the country. Many others in the club were also purged. Bayern was taunted as the "Jew's club" and as a semi-professional club Bayern was also affected by the ruling that football players had to be full amateurs again. In the following years Bayern could not sustain its role of contender for the national title, achieving mid-table results in its regional league instead.

After the war Bayern became a member of the Oberliga Süd, the southern conference of the German first division, which was split five ways at that time. Bayern struggled, hiring and firing 13 coaches between 1945 and 1963. In 1955 they were relegated, but returned to the Oberliga in the following season and won the DFB-Pokal for the first time, beating Fortuna Düsseldorf 1–0 in the final. The club struggled financially though, verging on bankruptcy at the end of the 1950s. Manufacturer Roland Endler provided the necessary funds and was rewarded with four years at the helm of the club. In 1963 the Oberligas in Germany were consolidated into one national league, the Bundesliga. Five teams from the Oberliga South were admitted. Bayern finished third in that year's southern division, but another Munich team, TSV 1860 Munich, had won the championship. As the DFB preferred not to include two teams from one city, Bayern was not chosen for the Bundesliga. They gained promotion two years later, fielding a team with young talents like Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller, and Sepp Maier — who would later be collectively referred to as the axis.