A National Olympic Committee (NOC) of the Saarland was founded in spring of 1950 in the Saar protectorate which existed from 1947 to 1956 (German state of Saarland since), a region of Western Germany that was (again) occupied in 1945 by France. As a separate team, they only took part in the 1952 Summer Olympics before being allowed to rejoin the German team for the summer games of 1956. 36 competitors, 31 men and 5 women, took part in 32 events in 9 sports.