This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2008) |
Coat of arms of Brandenburg | |
---|---|
Armiger | Government of Brandenburg |
Adopted | 1990 |
Blazon | Argent an eagle Gules armed and beaked Or, langued Gules. The wings charged with a trefoil Or. |
Earlier version(s) | 1816-1946 The Prussian Province of Brandenburg |
The German state of Brandenburg has a coat of arms depicting a red eagle.
According to tradition, the Märkischer Adler ('Marcher eagle'), or red eagle of the March of Brandenburg, was adopted by Margrave Gero in the 10th century. Gustav A. Seyler states that the Ascanian Albert the Bear was the originator. [1] He divided his territory among his children, thereby creating the territories which would later become Anhalt, Brandenburg, and Meissen.
The March of Brandenburg, known as the Holy Roman Empire's 'sandbox' (Streusandbüchse), was granted in 1415 to Burggrave Frederick VI of Nuremberg of the House of Hohenzollern. Over the centuries, the Hohenzollerns made these poor marshes and woodlands the nucleus of a powerful state.
After being formally enfeoffed as Elector Frederick I of Brandenburg, he quartered the arms of Hohenzollern (quarterly sable and argent) and the burgraviate of Nuremberg (Or, a lion sable within a border compony gules and argent) with the Brandenburg red eagle. The blue escutcheon with the golden sceptre, as symbol of the office of archchamberlain (Erzkämmerer) of the Empire, was added under Frederick II (1440-70).
In December 1470, Emperor Frederick III gave the duchies of Pomerania (argent a griffin gules), Kashubia (Or a griffin sable), Stettin (Szczecin) (azure a griffin gules) and Wenden (argent, a griffin bendy-sinister vert and gules) in liege to the electors of Brandenburg, making them in turn the overlords of the dukes of Western Pomerania.[ citation needed ] The quarters and crests of these duchies and the Principality of Rügen (parted horizontally, a black lion in gold and a wall of bricks in red and blue), however, were incorporated in the Brandenburg arms.
Elector John Sigismund (1572–1619) inherited the Duchy of Prussia, outside the Holy Roman Empire on the Baltic Sea, in 1618. In 1609 John Sigismund's wife had inherited rights to Cleves (Gules an escutcheon argent, overall an escarbuncle Or), Mark (Or, a fess checquy gules and argent), Jülich (Or a lion sable) and Berg (argent a lion gules) in the Rhineland. A compromise over them with the House of Wittelsbach (Palatinate-Neuburg), giving Brandenburg only Cleves and Mark, was reached in the 1614 Treaty of Xanten, but the arms of the other principalities were put in nevertheless.
The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 brought Brandenburg the former prince-bishoprics of Magdeburg (per pale gules and argent), Halberstadt (per pale argent and gules), Minden (gules, two keys in saltire argent) and Cammin (a silver anchored cross). Rügen and Hither Pomerania, however, had to be given up to Sweden as part of Swedish Pomerania.
It was around this time to that Elector Frederick William (1620-88), called the "Great Elector", adopted the Pomeranian "wild man" as supporters of his arms. He also placed the outer helmets over the heads of the supporters.
When the Duchy of Prussia gained full sovereignty from Poland in the Treaty of Wehlau on 19 September 1657, the electoral cap, which had until then crowned the smaller versions of the arms on coins, was adorned with arches as in a ducal crown. Elector Frederick III changed the arms substantially when he took the title Frederick I, "King in Prussia", on 18 January 1701.
In 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, the March of Brandenburg was reorganized as the Province of Brandenburg within the Kingdom of Prussia. Its arms depicted the red eagle of Brandenburg flanked by a wildman and a knight.
With the dissolution of Prussia after World War II, new arms were created for Brandenburg in 1945, avoiding any heraldic resemblance with the traditional arms. [2] It showed an oak in front of a rising sun on a background in red, white and red, then also used in the official flag. [2] A shield in blue, white and green was shown in the upper left corner. [2] The little shield is a reversed variant of the flag of the city of Brandenburg upon Havel. This new coat of arms never gained popularity and was thus not considered when Brandenburg regained statehood after 1990. [2] The arms of the state of Brandenburg became a red eagle without adornment.
The current arms are declared thus:
§ 1 State colors
- The state colors are red-white.
§ 2 State coat of arms
- (1) The coat of arms of the state shows on a shield in white (silver) a red eagle, looking to the right, with wings decorated with stalks of clover in gold and armored gold. (Appendix 1).
- (2) The original painting of the coat of arms is preserved at the main public record office of Brandenburg.
— The Prime Minister Dr. Manfred Stolpe, Minister of the Interior Alwin Ziel, Law on the State Symbols of the State of Brandenburg (Hoheitszeichen-Gesetz — HzG) of January 30, 1991 (GVBl.I/91, [Nr. 04], S.26), Potsdam, March, 20th 1991 [3]
The House of Ascania was a dynasty of German rulers. It is also known as the House of Anhalt, which refers to its longest-held possession, Anhalt.
The House of Hohenzollern is a formerly royal German dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania. The family came from the area around the town of Hechingen in Swabia during the late 11th century and took their name from Hohenzollern Castle. The first ancestors of the Hohenzollerns were mentioned in 1061.
Joachim Frederick, of the House of Hohenzollern, was Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg from 1598 until his death.
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was a principality in southwestern Germany. Its rulers belonged to the senior Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzollern. The Swabian Hohenzollerns were elevated to princes in 1623. The small sovereign state with the capital city of Sigmaringen was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1850 following the abdication of its sovereign in the wake of the revolutions of 1848, then became part of the newly created Province of Hohenzollern.
The County of Mark was a county and state of the Holy Roman Empire in the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle. It lay on both sides of the Ruhr River along the Volme and Lenne rivers.
Brandenburg-Prussia is the historiographic denomination for the early modern realm of the Brandenburgian Hohenzollerns between 1618 and 1701. Based in the Electorate of Brandenburg, the main branch of the Hohenzollern intermarried with the branch ruling the Duchy of Prussia, and secured succession upon the latter's extinction in the male line in 1618. Another consequence of intermarriage was the incorporation of the lower Rhenish principalities of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg after the Treaty of Xanten in 1614.
Prussia was a German state located on most of the North European Plain, also occupying southern and eastern regions. It formed the German Empire when it united the German states in 1871. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, expanding its size with the Prussian Army. Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany.
The coat of arms of Germany displays a black eagle with a red beak, a red tongue and red feet on a golden field, which is blazoned: Or, an eagle displayed sable beaked langued and membered gules. This is the Bundesadler, formerly known as Reichsadler. It is one of the oldest coats of arms in the world, and today the oldest national symbol used in Europe.
The coat of arms of Denmark has a lesser and a greater version.
The state of Prussia developed from the State of the Teutonic Order. The original flag of the Teutonic Knights had been a black cross on a white flag. Emperor Frederick II in 1229 granted them the right to use the black Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire. This "Prussian Eagle" remained the coats of arms of the successive Prussian states until 1947.
The coat of arms of the German state of Baden-Württemberg features a greater and a lesser version.
The state of Prussia had its origins in the separate lands of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and of the Duchy of Prussia. The Margraviate of Brandenburg developed from the medieval Northern March of the Holy Roman Empire, passing to the House of Hohenzollern in 1415. The Duchy of Prussia originated in 1525 when Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a member of a cadet branch of the Hohenzollern house, secularized the eastern lands of the Teutonic Knights as a Polish fief. Prince-elector John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, inherited the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, thus uniting Brandenburg and Prussia under one ruler in a personal union; the Elector's state became known as Brandenburg-Prussia. The Kingdom of Prussia formed when Elector Frederick III assumed the title of Frederick I, King in Prussia, on 18 January 1701.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
The coat of arms of North Rhine-Westphalia is the official coat of arms of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
This article is about the coat of arms of the German state of Saarland.
The coat of arms of the present-day German free state of Saxony shows a tenfold horizontally-partitioned field of black (sable) and gold/yellow (or) stripes, charged with a green (vert) crancelin running from the viewer's top-left to bottom-right. Although the crancelin is sometimes shown bent (embowed) like a crown, this is due to artistic license. The coat of arms is also displayed on the state flag of Saxony.
The coat of arms of the German state of Thuringia was introduced in 1990. Like the 1949 coat of arms of Hesse it is based on the Ludovingian lion barry, also known as the "lion of Hesse", with the addition of eight mullets.
Bernard II of Saxe-Lauenburg was a member of the House of Ascania and Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg from 1426 to 1463. His full title was Duke of Saxony, Angria and Westphalia, however only ruling the branch duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg between 1426 and 1463.
The German Emperors after 1873 had a variety of titles and coats of arms, which in various compositions became the officially used titles and coats of arms. The title and coat of arms were last fixed in 1873, but the titles did not necessarily mean that the area was really dominated, and sometimes even several princes bore the same title.
The coat of arms of Pomerania, also known as the Pomeranian Griffin, is the symbol of Pomerania, a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. It depicts a red griffin with yellow (golden) beak and claws, placed within a white (silver) shield. It originates from the late 12th century.