Werder Bremen and Mainz 05 secured very important Bundesliga victories on Sunday - albeit for differing reasons.
Bremen's 3-1 win in Freiburg saw them leave the relegation zone, while Mainz's 4-2 victory at SV Hamburg pushed them above Bayern Munich into fourth place.
Andre Schuerrle with two goals, Florian Heller and an own goal by Gojko Kacar gave Mainz the win in Hamburg, for whom Marcell Jansen and Mladen Petric scored.
Hamburg's opening goal - coming a day after FIFA announced that goal-line technology would not be implemented for at least another year - was clearly not a goal as the ball did not cross the line after Jansen's shot in the 17th minute.
Mainz drew level in the 56th minute through Schuerrle's header.
It took the home side just three minutes to go ahead again as Petric made the most of Mainz's failure to clear the ball.
Mainz came back for the second time when Kacar scored into his own goal on the hour when he attempted to clear a cross from Marcel Risse.
Worse was to follow for Hamburg, as a quick break allowed Schuerrle to score his second with a well-taken chip over Hamburg goalkeeper Frank Rost eight minutes from the end.
Substitute Heller put the game beyond doubt two minutes from the end.
Man-of-the-match Schuerrle said that it was much tougher than the score suggested. "It was a very difficult game for us, Hamburg dominated the first half and deserved their lead, but we came back strongly and I think in the end it was a fair result.
"The coach told us at half-time that we should believe in ourselves and we did that and were rewarded in the end."
The win sees Mainz move to fourth in the table on 43 points, while Hamburg are seventh on 37 points.
In the earlier game Werder Bremen secured an important victory at SC Freiburg to gain three points in their battle against relegation.
Sandro Wagner, Claudio Pizarro and substitute Marko Marin scored the goals for the visitors, while Papiss Demba Cisse pulled one back for Freiburg from the penalty spot.
Bremen coach Thomas Schaaf said his side deserved the victory. "The team has worked well the whole week. Possibly we gave away the ball too easily, but we played well.
"We need to be a unit, we all got ourselves into this difficult situation and we need to work together to get ourselves out of it."
On Saturday, Bayern Munich's hopes of finishing in the top three received a massive dent as they lost 3-1 at Hanover 96, who are third on 47 points - five points more than Bayern who are fifth.
Bayer Leverkusen, who beat VfL Wolfsburg 3-0, are second behind runaway Bundesliga leaders Borussia Dortmund - eight points ahead of Bayern.
Dortmund, who beat Cologne 1-0 on Friday night, are virtually assured of their first championship since 2002 as they have a 12 point lead over Leverkusen with just ten games to go.
At the wrong end of the table, there were important victories for bottom club Borussia Moenchengladbach, who beat Hoffenheim 2-0 and VfB Stuttgart, who won 1-0 against a 10-man Schalke 04.
In other matches Nuremberg stayed in contention for a place in Europe with a 5-0 thrashing of St Pauli, while Eintracht Frankfurt's poor run of not having scored a goal in the eight matches they have played in 2011 continued as they were held to a goalless draw at home by Kaiserslautern.
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