Flag East Germany State 1959-73 Civil 1973-90 by History-Explorer on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

State flag of East Germany, 1959-73. Flag of East Germany, 1973-90.

From 1949-1959, the flag of East Germany was a plain black-red-yellow tricolour like West Germany, after the state flag was created in 1959 the plain black-red-yellow tricolour remained the civil flag of East Germany until 1973 when the state flag became simply the flag of East Germany.

The colours' meaning comes from a German phrase in the Napoleonic Wars era: "Out of the blackness (black) of servitude through bloody (red) battles to the golden (gold/yellow) light of freedom".

Note 1: I use a standard palette of shades of colours for the flag designs. Contrary to the images of flags depicted on Wikipedia, I do not follow the "official" shades of colours claimed by governments as well as alternate history flags based on flags of existing countries. The problem is that it commonly results in bizarre shading of a flag if they are taken literally - in practice such "official" colour shades are almost never applied and standard reds, blues, etc, are used.

Note 2: Due to problems with the Inkscape editor I use, I could not fully recolour the emblem on the flag in standard reds, yellows, etc, but it looks close enough anyway.