BRD (Germany)
While the English equivalent FRG was used as an IOC country code and a FIFA trigramme, the use of BRD was strongly discouraged by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany itself from the 1970s, because it was considered to be a derogatory communist term following its widespread use in East Germany since 1968; thus the term was regarded as a possible expression of an extremist, anti-constitutional and anti-democratic sentiment by West German authorities.
This corresponded to the spirit of the then West German constitution, the Basic Law, allowing all states or Länder, then under Allied control, to join the new Federal Republic.
The communists no longer strove for German reunification, and the name BRD was introduced as a propaganda counter-term to the term DDR, trying to express the equality of the states.
Therefore, using the abbreviation BRD fitted perfectly into the official East German policy of downplaying the concept of a united Germany.
In 1974, the GDR had replaced the vehicle registration code D, hitherto shared with the Federal Republic, for DDR and demanded that West Germany recognise the division by likewise accepting BRD.
[35] In 1965 the Federal Minister of All-German Affairs (later Intra-German Relations)[36] issued the Directives for the appellation of Germany recommending that the use of BRD be avoided.
In November 1979 the federal government informed the Bundestag that the West German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF agreed not to use the initialism.
[17] Under the West German federal system, the states were generally responsible for school education, and by the 1970s, some of them had either already recommended omitting the initialism, or, in the case of Bavaria, forbidden it.
[37] Similarly, a decree by the educational authorities in the state of Schleswig-Holstein of 4 October 1976 declared the term to be nicht wünschenswert or "undesirable".
[37] The different usages were so ingrained that one could deduce a person's or source's political leaning from the name used for West Germany, with far-left movements in the country using BRD.
Other names used by West German media included Ost-Berlin and Ostberlin (both meaning "East Berlin") as well as Ostsektor or "Eastern Sector".
[46] In 1995, a disagreement arose between reunified Germany and newly independent Slovakia, as Germany objected to the use of the Slovak language name Nemecká spolková republika (literally "German Federal Republic") owing to its Cold War connotations, instead of Spolková republika Nemecko.
