State Colours
As a result of the 1848 revolutions, the Federal Convention of the German monarchs, who had continued the use of the Imperial Eagle coat of arms in 1815, also adopted the tricolour ("from German time immemorial") in order to steady the nationalist unrest. Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria had the Black, Red, and Gold flag hoisted on St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna and showed himself with the flag on a window of Hofburg Palace. In Berlin, King Frederick William IV of Prussia had to bow to the fallen insurgents of the liberation movement and to wear a Black, Red and Gold armband while riding through the city.
When on 18 May 1848 the Frankfurt Parliament first convened, the city streets were decorated in the "German colours" like the assembly room in St. Paul's Church. On November 12, the parliament passed a resolution whereafter Black, Red and Gold became the German war and merchant flag. However, as official flag of the German Confederation, the tricolour was mainly used in the small Imperial fleet (Reichsflotte), which was dissolved already by 1852. The Frankfurt Constitution adopted in 1849 and never carried into effect, omitted any provision of national symbols. After the dissolution of the Frankfurt Parliament, the tricolour vanished from public space. Mocked by Heinrich Heine as "Old-Germanic rubbish", it nevertheless remained the official flag of the German Confederation, "revitalized" in 1866 as the banner of Austria and her allies in the War with Prussia and the North German states.
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