On 29 August 2020, German demonstrators protesting against Covid restrictions tried to storm the Reichstag building in Berlin. Unlike their counterparts in Washington, DC on 6 January, they did not succeed; there were far fewer protesters, and there was no head of state to goad them. It was startling to see some of the Berlin mob waving flags and banners in the colours of pre-1918 imperial Germany – black, white and red – in the same way that the Washington crowd waved flags of the Confederacy.
These are also the colours Hitler used when he designed the Nazi Party’s flag. They stand for a distinctively authoritarian concept of Germany, in contrast to the black, red and gold of the 1848 Revolution, the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1933, and today’s national flag.
Content from our partners
