Ice hockey in Germany is one of the more popular sports, and ranks behind Handball and football in spectator favour and meaning. Ice hockey is organized today in Germany by the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, the highest professional league, and by the Deutschen Eishockey-Bund ice hockey federation, which is the sport's federation in Germany and a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation. The men's national ice hockey team stands seventh in the world on the current IIHF rank list. History Games similar to ice hockey were popular in winter time not only in the Alps but also at lakes and rivers all over Germany for centuries. The traditional food Eisbein is named after a bone which is used for making ice skates. In 1864 the first skating club was found in Frankfurt, in the same city opened in 1881 the third artificial ice skating rink in the world (after London and New York), but it was the first with a cooling system with ammonia. Even if it covered only 520 m2 and was operating only for advertising reasons, it was replaced 10 years later by a permanent one. The beginning of ice hockey in Germany brought a rapid decline of the traditional German games played with a stick on ice. The first registered ice hockey game in Germany was played on February 4, 1897 on the Halensee Lake in Berlin. The participants were Akademischer SC 1893 Berlin and a team of students. 1901 saw the first German club create its own ice hockey department, the Berliner Schlittschuhclub. As a consequence, further ice hockey associations or departments developed first in Berlin and then in other large German cities. In 1908 ice hockey was taken up as section of the Deutscher Eissport-Verband. On 19 September 1909 Germany became the sixth member nation of the predecessor organization of the IIHF, the "Ligue International de Hockey sur Glace" (LIHG). By 1910, when Germany participated in the first Ice Hockey European Championships, a city league with ten teams was already playing in Berlin. Besides the Berliner Schlittschuhclub of the BFC Preussen, the teams were the Sportclub Berlin, the Berliner Eislaufverein 1904, the BFC Britania, the Berliner EV 1886, the Hockey Club Berlin, the Sportklub Komet, the SC Charlottenburg, and the Eislauf Verein Berlin. In 1912, the first German championships were held, which the Berliner Schlittschuhclub would win. After the First World War, Germany was excluded