What Do The Colours Of The German Flag Symbolise? – Mythbusting Berlin

“Democracy is for us not only a matter of the moment, but it is a matter of our historical legacy… The symbol of this path, with all its tragedy and all its failed attempts, is black-red-gold. We would be faithless to our own history if we were to abandon this symbol.”
Carlo Schmid, a key architect of the West German Basic Law (1948)

Before we unfurl the specific history of Schwarz-Rot-Gold, it’s worth remembering that flags are never just pieces of fabric. They are loaded symbols, visual shorthand for a nation’s entire history and aspirations.

A flag can inspire patriotic fervour, revolutionary zeal, or deep-seated resentment.

It represents a collective identity, a promise of belonging.

In the 19th century, as the very idea of the ‘nation-state’ was being forged in the fires of revolution and war across Europe, the question of a flag was paramount.

For the disparate collection of German-speaking kingdoms, duchies, and free cities, a flag was not just a nice-to-have accessory; it was the visual embodiment of a question that haunted the age:

The answer, for a long time, was unclear.

Before the 19th century, there was no ‘German’ national flag because there was no unified Germany.

The Holy Roman Empire, a bewildering patchwork of territories that existed for a thousand years before its dissolution by Napoleon in 1806, had no national flag in the modern sense.

Its imperial banner featured a black eagle on a golden background, colours associated with the Emperor.

These imperial colours, black and gold, were ancient and august, but they represented the authority of the Emperor, not the sovereignty of a German people.

Red and white were also significant, often associated with the powerful Hanseatic League, a medieval confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns.

But a single flag to unite all German speakers?