Flag of Germany

How to read it

Article 22 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) of 1949 says the federal flag is black, red and gold. The Order on the German Flags, issued by the Federal President on 13 November 1996, gives the detail: three horizontal stripes of equal width, black at the top, red in the middle and gold at the bottom, with height to length as 3 to 5. It also allows the flag to hang as a vertical banner, black on the left. The Parliamentary Council chose black, red and gold in 1949 with one vote against, and since 3 October 1990 it has been the flag of reunified Germany.

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The federal flag and the service flag with the eagle

The plain tricolour is the federal flag (Bundesflagge). Anyone may fly it: the Bundestag’s research service says flying the plain federal flag carries no penalty and is open to everyone. Federal offices fly the federal service flag (Bundesdienstflagge), which has the same stripes with the federal shield on them, set slightly towards the pole and reaching up to a fifth into the black and gold stripes. The shield shows a single-headed black heraldic eagle on gold, its beak, tongue and claws red, facing the pole. Using a federal or state service flag without authority is an administrative offence under section 124 of the Administrative Offences Act, punishable by a fine.

Where black, red and gold came from

The Bundestag says the origin of the colours can’t be proved for certain. After the wars of liberation of 1815 they were traced to the Lützow Free Corps, volunteers against Napoleon whose black uniforms had red facings and gold buttons. How far that played a part is disputed, the Austrian and German press agencies wrote in 2019. The colours became popular through the black and red flag with gold trim of the Jena student fraternity (Urburschenschaft), which former Lützow volunteers had joined, and because many Germans wrongly took them for the colours of the old German empire. Many of those at the Hambach Festival in 1832 carried black, red and gold flags. In 1848 the Federal Diet in Frankfurt and the National Assembly declared them the colours of the German Confederation and of the German empire they meant to found.

From the empire to 1949

Under Prussia’s lead after 1866, Bismarck replaced black, red and gold with black, white and red: the black and white of Prussia, with red for the Hanseatic cities. In 1919 the Weimar National Assembly agreed a compromise: the national colours were black, red and gold, and the merchant flag was black, white and red with the national colours in the upper corner by the pole. East Germany kept black, red and gold too, and from 1959 added its hammer and compass emblem in a wreath of grain.

Telling it from the Belgian flag

Belgium’s flag has black, yellow and red in vertical bands, where Germany’s stripes run across and its third colour is gold. Belgium’s constitution names its colours as red, yellow and black. S.M.A.K., the museum of contemporary art in Ghent, says Belgium first ordered horizontal bands in 1830 and turned them vertical in 1831 because the horizontal flag looked too much like the Dutch one.