Flag of Germany

What the flag of Germany looks like

The flag of Germany has three horizontal stripes of equal height: black at the top, red in the middle and gold at the bottom. The proportions are 3:5. There is no emblem on the national flag that people fly at home or at sports events. The flag used by federal authorities, the Bundesdienstflagge, shows the federal shield with the eagle on the same stripes.

The third color is officially called gold, not yellow, and on screen and in print it appears as a deep yellow. The constitution says only that "the federal flag is black, red and gold", and the exact shades were only defined later, in a 1999 cabinet decision on the government's corporate design. The design is easy to confuse with Belgium, whose flag has black, yellow and red in vertical stripes. You can see the German flag in its smallest form in the Germany flag emoji.

German flag meaning and symbolism

The colors are often explained with a phrase popular in the 19th century: "from the blackness of servitude, through the blood of battle, to the golden light of freedom." A poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath from 1848 used related color imagery. Another reading says that black stands for determination, red for courage and gold for generosity. These readings are traditional and not part of the law.

The colors have a political meaning as well. For many Germans, black, red and gold mean democracy, civil rights and national unity based on a constitution, in contrast to the black, white and red flag of the empire, which stood for Prussian authority and, later, for the Nazis. Today the flag is flown at the national day of 3 October, which marks reunification in 1990, and at football matches, where it is used by supporters of the national team.

History of the German flag

The colors go back to 1813, when volunteers of the Lützow Free Corps fought against Napoleon in uniforms that were black with red facings and gold buttons. After the wars, students in fraternities, who wanted a unified and liberal Germany, adopted the colors, and black, red and gold flags were carried at the Hambach Festival in 1832. In 1848, during the revolution, the Frankfurt Parliament made them the colors of the planned German nation. The revolution failed and the colors were set aside.

In 1867 the North German Confederation under Prussia chose black, white and red, a mix of the Prussian black and white and the red and white of the Hanseatic cities. This became the flag of the German Empire in 1871. After the First World War, the Weimar Republic returned to black, red and gold in its constitution of 1919. Conservative groups kept using the old imperial colors, and the dispute between the two sets of colors was one of the political divides of the 1920s.

In 1933 the Nazi regime abolished the republican colors, and black, red and gold was not used as the national flag again until after the war. In 1949, both German states chose black, red and gold. East Germany added a hammer and compass emblem in 1959, and it was removed when the country was reunified in 1990. West Germany's Basic Law of 1949 (Article 22) is still the legal basis for the flag.

Why are there two German flags?

People who ask about two German flags usually mean the black, red and gold flag and the black, white and red flag of the German Empire (1871-1918). Only the first is the national flag. The imperial flag is a historical flag and no longer an official symbol. See more flags of Europe.