National colours of Germany

The national colours of the Federal Republic of Germany are officially black, red and gold, defined with the adoption of the German flag as a tricolour with these colours in 1949.

The colours ultimately hark back to the tricolour adopted by the Urburschenschaft of Jena in 1815, representing an early phase in the development of German nationalism and the idea of a unified German state. Since the 1860s, there has been a competing tradition of national colours as black, white and red, based on the Hanseatic flags, used as the flag of the North German Confederation and the German Empire. The Weimar Republic in 1919 opted to re-introduce the black, red and gold tricolour. This was controversial, and as a compromise, the old flag was reintroduced in 1922 to represent German diplomatic missions abroad. As a reaction, Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold was an organization formed in 1924 representing the parties supporting parliamentary democracy, and for the remainder of the existence of the Weimar Republic, black-red-gold represented the centrist parties supporting parliamentary and black-white-red represented its nationalist and monarchist opposition.

The choice of black red and gold as national colours was retrospectively motivated by occurrence of this combination of colours in the medieval coat of arms of the Holy Roman Emperors, the black Reichsadler in a golden field used since the 12th century. The imperial colours black and gold were adopted by many imperial cities to underline their immediacy. The colours black, red and gold were supposedly used at the election of Frederick Barbarossa as King of the Romans on 4 March 1152 in Frankfurt. According to contemporary sources, the new king's way from Frankfurt Cathedral to the Römer square was covered with a coloured carpet, which was afterwards cut into numerous small parts and distributed to the crowds. A red-clawed, -beaked and -tongued imperial eagle was used from the 14th century onwards, as depicted in the Codex Manesse about 1304.

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