BRD (Germany)

BRD (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ^ⓘ; English: FRG/Federal Republic of Germany) is an unofficial abbreviation for the Federal Republic of Germany, informally known in English as West Germany until 1990, and just Germany since reunification. It was occasionally used in the Federal Republic itself during the early Cold War;^[1][2] it was commonly used between 1968 and 1990 by the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), resulting in a strong deprecation of its use in West Germany. The East German regime had previously used the term "German Federal Republic" (German: Deutsche Bundesrepublik), which it abbreviated as "DBR", to refer to West Germany. The most widely used abbreviation for West Germany in the country itself was its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "DE", which has remained the country code of reunified 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.^[1][3] The term was not banned by law, but its use was discouraged or forbidden in schools in West Germany from the 1970s, and treated as an error.^[4] As a result of its use by East Germany and the war on the abbreviation by the West German government, far-left terrorists such as the Red Army Faction tended to use the term as a way to attack West Germany; additionally the term "BRD" has been used by some far-right groups for the same purpose. After German reunification, the country is usually referred to simply as Germany (Deutschland), and hence the need for abbreviations is greatly diminished; if an abbreviation is used at all, the uncontroversial standard abbreviation "DE" for "Deutschland" is often used. However, since the end of the Cold War the term "BRD" has lost some of its potency as an insult intended to attack the Federal Republic of Germany, as it was used by East Germany and far-left terrorists such as the Red Army Faction, and the term "BRD" has been listed in the German dictionary Duden as an "unofficial abbreviation" for the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1990s,^[5] and is occasionally used by national newspapers across the political spectrum.^[6][7]