Calling Germany's flag black, red and yellow was once ruled a crime
The stripes on Germany's flag look yellow, yet officially they are gold, and the distinction carries political weight. Monarchists and Nazis mocked the democratic colours as black-red-mustard, so in 1951 a federal court declared that jeering at them this way had become malicious slander of the state's symbols.
Germany spent over a century torn between two colour schemes. Black, red and gold stood for the liberal revolutions of 1848 and 1849, the Weimar Republic and, from 1949, both German states. Black, white and red came from the North German Confederation's 1867 constitution and the empire that followed, then became a banner of the political right after 1918; the Nazis restored it in 1933 beside their swastika. It remains legal, unlike specific Nazi symbols, and still turns up among far-right groups.
Where the democratic colours came from is disputed. One theory links them to the Jena students' league banned under the Carlsbad Decrees, whose song Johannes Brahms quoted in his Academic Festival Overture. Another points to the Lützow Free Corps, student volunteers fighting Napoleon in black uniforms with red trim and gold buttons, their colours read as a journey from servitude through bloody battle to the light of freedom. Older echoes exist too: the Holy Roman Emperor's banner showed a black eagle on gold, later with red claws and beak. The first modern tricolour in a sovereign German state flew over the tiny Principality of Reuss-Greiz from 1778.
Article 22 of the Basic Law simply states that the federal flag is black, red and gold. Specifications from 1950 set a 3:5 ratio, longer than Weimar's 2:3. A separate government version carries the federal shield and may be flown only by federal authorities; the navy's variant ends in a swallowtail. Defaming the national flag can bring a fine or up to three years in prison. As the heraldist Arnold Rabbow summed it up in 1968, the colours are black-red-yellow but are called black-red-gold.
Source: Flag of Germany
