[ttepasse]

It isn’t even the European stars – the Flag of Europe always had 12 stars, whereas the embossing has 16 stars.

“Ah, 16 stars, because Germany has 16 federal states”, you'd say at first thought. But while the German Red Cross organization has sub-organizations, the Landesverbände, those only partially mirror the modern 16 federal states. Some Landesverbände predate the modern federal states and are instead for more traditional German regions. Instead of a single Landesverband for the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen [1] there are two Landesverbände, one for Nordrhein, one for Westfalia-Lippe. In Lower Saxony there is an extra Landesverband for Oldenburg, in Baden-Württemberg there is an extra Badischer Landesverband. That makes 19 regional sub-organizations, but there aren’t 19 stars.

And all of these 19 regional subs predate 2001. I can’t really see a reason for the DRK in 2001 to use 16 stars.

[1] Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine Westfalia) was created forcefully by the British Military Administration in 1946 out of the former prussian provinces of the Rhine and parts of Westfalia (and small Lippe!) in the creatively named "Operation Marriage". Nobody thought a union between the lively Rhinelanders and the laconic Westfalians (and the Lippians!) could work given the differences – but it seems to work mostly great. Nobody thinks of seceding. Must be the first time in history.