Konrad Adenauer gave the advice to greet the French flag three times.
The French are unlikely to have adhered to this maxim, because it took them a long time to realize that the tricolor had changed its color.
President Emmanuel Macron initiated a color change from cobalt to navy blue more than a year ago.
Michaela Wiegel
Political correspondent based in Paris.
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He was inspired by his “master of ceremonies” Arnaud Jolens shortly before the 2020 national holiday. In 2017, Jolens came up with the scenography for Macron's victory ceremony at the Louvre and proposed to the president to return to navy blue.
For a year now, the flag has been fluttering over the Elysée in darker blue next to white and red, albeit largely unnoticed.
But now journalists have noticed that the European flag and tricolor are no longer clinging to each other in a uniform blue.
Since then, the nation has been puzzling over the secret message of the color change.
Does Macron want to renounce his European convictions?
In fact, the cobalt blue color scheme goes back to the European Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who decreed in the Elysée Palace in 1976 to change the blue of the tricolor to that of the European flag.
Macron has reversed this decision to return to the historical colors, as the Elysée now explained afterwards.
The President wanted to honor the resistance fighters of the Second World War, the "Compagnons" of the liberation and the front-line fighters of the First World War.
Also remember with the original colors of the first conscripts of the "year 2" after the French Revolution.
The President had not planned an expensive change of all flags on French town halls and other public buildings, the Elysée Palace appeased.
From now on, the new-old navy blue is only mandatory for flag manufacturers.