Sent: 27.12.2016
Recieved: 04.01.2017
Travel time: 8 days
Sender Dagmar Meyerer (Germany)
Wiki: The flag of Germany or German Flag (German: Flagge
Deutschlands) is a tricolour consisting of three equal horizontal bands
displaying the national colours of Germany: black, red, and gold (German:
Schwarz-Rot-Gold).[2] The flag was first adopted as the national flag of modern
Germany in 1919, during the short-lived Weimar Republic to 1933.
Germany has two competing traditions of national colours,
black-red-gold and black-white-red, which have played an important role in the
modern history of Germany. The black-red-gold tricolour's first appearance
anywhere in a German-ethnicity sovereign state within what today comprises
Germany occurred in 1778, and achieved prominence during the 1848 Revolutions.
The short-lived Frankfurt Parliament of 1848–1850 proposed the tricolour as a
flag for a united and democratic German state under a constitutional monarchy.
With the formation of the short-lived Weimar Republic after World War I, the
tricolour was adopted as the national flag of Germany. Sixteen years later
following World War II, the tricolour was again designated as the flag of both
West and East Germany divided states in 1949. The two flags were identical until
1959, when the East German flag was augmented with the coat of arms of East
Germany. Since reunification on 3 October 1990, the black-red-gold tricolour
has become the flag of a reunified Federal Republic of Germany.
After the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, the
Prussian-dominated North German Confederation adopted a tricolour of
black-white-red as its flag. This flag later became the flag of the German
Empire, formed following the unification of Germany under the Prussian king who
became emperor in 1871, and was used until 1918 with the end of the First World
War. Black, white, and red were reintroduced as the German national colours
with the establishment of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler in 1933, replacing
German republican colours with imperial colours until the end of World War II.
The colours of the modern flag are associated with the
republican democracy first proposed in 1848, formed after World War I, and
represent German unity and freedom.[3] During the Weimar Republic, the
black-red-gold colours were the colours of the democratic, centrist, and
republican political parties, as seen in the name of Reichsbanner
Schwarz-Rot-Gold, formed by members of the Social Democratic, the Centre, and
the Democratic parties to defend the republic against extremists on the right
and left.
