United Team of Germany at the Olympics

Medal of honour – cast-bronze – German Democratic Republic – "Gesamtdeutsche Olympiamannschaft – Melbourne 1956" – Editing All-German Olympic Team

As East Germany had introduced its own national anthem in 1949, 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, East Germany also introduced an altered black-red-gold tricolour flag of Germany as the 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.[1] Yet, the IOC code EUA (from the official French International Olympic Committee (IOC) designation Équipe Unifiée d'Allemagne) is currently applied retrospectively 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 (West) and GDR (East), 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 Winter 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). East Germany ceased to exist in 1990, when its five states, together with Berlin, joined West Germany in German reunification.

• Germany at the Summer Olympics
• Germany at the Winter Olympics
• Unified Team (disambiguation)

• "Olympic Results". International Olympic Committee.
• "United Team of Germany". Olympedia.com.
• "Olympic Analytics/EUA". olympanalyt.com.