Jonathan Rommelmann and Jason Osborne became the first German lightweight rowers to win an Olympic medal.
The duo from Krefeld and Mainz only narrowly had to admit defeat to Ireland on Thursday on the Sea Forest Waterway in Tokyo and won the silver medal.
Bronze went to the Italian boat.
Since the Olympic premiere in Atlanta in 1996, no German double-two had managed to reach the medal ranks.
For women, however, there was silver in 2000 and 2004.
Now Rommelmann / Osborne lifted the men into the Olympic history books with a courageous race in difficult wind conditions.
Only 0.86 seconds behind
On the 2000 meter long route, there was a pushing wind in demanding but manageable conditions.
Rommelmann and Osborne were in the lead for a long time, but had to let the strong Irishmen pass on the last part of the route.
The gap was just 0.86 seconds.
The duo had already dominated the competition in the semi-finals and won by a large margin.
Only the Irish Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy set an even bigger exclamation mark in their preliminary run with a new world record.
Rommelmann and Osborne were therefore aware that, in addition to the Italians, the boat from the green island had to be defeated for gold.
The two lightweight figureheads gained their self-confidence for the Gold project primarily in Austria.
In the training camp just before the start of the games, they "took another big step forward and now had a lot of boats under control".