The Wirmer Flag (German: Wirmer-Flagge), also known commercially as the flag of German Resistance 20 July or the Stauffenberg flag, is a design by Josef Wirmer. Wirmer was a resistance fighter against the Nazi Regime and part of the 20 July plot. According to his idea, the flag was to become the new flag of Germany after the successful assassination attempt against Hitler and the transfer of power to the conspirators. First discussed by the Parlamentarischer Rat ("Parliamentary Council") in 1948/49 as the federal flag, the design served in modified form as the party flag of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) from 1953 until around 1970 and as the model for the Free Democratic Party's (FDP) party symbol. The flag then disappeared from public perception.
In 1999, Reinhold Oberlercher, the thought leader of the Neo-Nazi German College ("Deutsches Kolleg"), declared the flag to be that of the Fourth Reich, aspired to by the college in his revised draft constitution of 9 November 1999, it became the college's flag. The German college also included Horst Mahler, who published the proclamation of the Reichsbürger movement on 14 December 2003. As a result, the flag became popular in the movement, which at the time received little media and social attention and was thus increasingly used by right-wing extremist and populist groups, which were met with criticism from various sides. Due to its high presence at the Dresden Pegida demonstrations, the flag was also referred to as the "Pegida flag" in some media reports.
Origin
Ottfried Neubecker's design
In the booklet Die Reichseinheitsflagge ("The Unity Flag of the Reich"), the vexillologist Ottfried Neubecker proposed in 1926 a flag in the color sequence black-gold-red as a compromise in the dispute over the German national flag ("Flaggenstreit"). He made two proposals for this: firstly, a tricolour in this color sequence, and secondly, a red Nordic Cross, outlined in gold, on a black background. This design also circulated as a Swallowtail as a proposal for a new Reichskriegsflagge ("imperial war flag"). It is believed that the Neubecker design may have influenced Wirmer later.
Josef Wirmer's design
Like Neubecker, Josef Wirmer designed the flag named after him based on the Nordic cross flags. His favored color scheme was created by experimenting with the three basic colors. In his opinion, the Christian cross was the most suitable as a symbol of the new state. The flag was to serve as a new national flag after the assassination of Adolf Hitler by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and the takeover of government power by the bourgeois resistance groups involved, as they did not want to adopt the black-red-gold tricolour of the Weimar Republic.The colors, however, were intended to integrate the democratic forces, while the reference to the flags of the Scandinavian countries and the Christian symbolism were also intended to appeal to the conservative circles among the officers, who hated the Weimar Republic with its flag. Incidentally, the Wirmer design corrected the heraldic error in the color sequence of the tricolour. This violated the heraldic rule of tincture that between "colors" (here black and red) there must always be a "metal" (gold/yellow or silver/white). There is no evidence that Wirmer ever presented his design to the other conspirators. The failure of the assassination attempt and the seizure of power prevented the implementation of the flag. Josef Wirmer was arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on 8 September 1944.
It is speculative that the flag had a similarity in design to the Reichskriegsflagge ("imperial war flag") and was thus also to find acceptance in the Wehrmacht. However, a report by Ernst Wirmer, Josef's younger brother, confirms this assumption. According to this report, Josef Wirmer had revised his design once again and added a thin black line between gold and red, which corresponds to the Balkenkreuz ("bar cross") of the German war flags. The second design is repeatedly wrongly attributed to Ernst Wirmer himself.