Unified Team of Germany - History

History

As the GDR in 1949 had introduced its own national anthem, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 melody to Schiller's Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy) was played for winning German athletes as a compromise. In 1959, the GDR also introduced an altered black-red-gold tricolour flag of Germany as flag of East Germany. Thus, a compromise had to be made also for the flag of the unified sports team. It was agreed upon to superimpose the plain flag with additional white Olympic rings. This flag was used from 1960 to 1968.

At the Games of 1956, 1960, and 1964 the team was simply known as "Germany" and the usual country code of GER was used, except at Innsbruck in 1964, when the Austrian hosts used the German language "D" for Deutschland. Yet, the IOC code EUA (from the official French-language IOC designation, Équipe Unifiée d'Allemagne) is currently applied in hindsight in the IOC medal database, without further explanation given. Only in 1976 did the IOC start to assign standardized codes. Before that time, the local Organizing Committees of each Olympic Games had chosen codes, often in the local language, resulting in a multitude of codes.

In the 1968 Winter Olympics, East and West German athletes competed as separate teams while still using the compromise Olympic flag and Beethoven anthem. While today listed under the IOC codes of FRG and GDR, respectively, in 1968 they were asymmetrically called in French Allemagne (Germany) and Allemagne de l'Est (East Germany), and in Spanish Alemania and Alemania del Este. The codes for Germany (West) were ALL (in Grenoble) and ALE (in Mexico City), and ADE for East Germany.

The separation was completed at the 1972 Summer Olympics with the use of separate flags and anthems. Because of the boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 summer games, only in 1972, 1976, and 1988 did two different German teams with different symbols compete against each other at Summer Olympics (not counting the Saar team of 1952). The German Democratic Republic ceased to exist after 1989, with its states joining the Federal Republic of Germany in the process of German reunification in 1990.