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.
The national flag of Germany is a tricolour consisting of three equal horizontal bands displaying the national colours of Germany: black, red, and gold. The flag was first sighted in 1848 in the German Confederation. The flag was also used by the German Empire from 1848 to 1849. It was officially adopted as the national flag of the German Reich from 1919 to 1933, and has been in use since its reintroduction in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
Prussia was a German state centred on the North European Plain that originated out of the State of the Teutonic Order. 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 Duchy of Carniola was an imperial estate of the Holy Roman Empire, established under Habsburg rule on the territory of the former East Frankish March of Carniola in 1364. A hereditary land of the Habsburg monarchy, it became a constituent land of the Austrian Empire in 1804 and part of the Kingdom of Illyria until 1849. A separate crown land from 1849, it was incorporated into the Cisleithanian territories of Austria-Hungary from 1867 until the state's dissolution in 1918. Its capital was German: Laibach, today Ljubljana.
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 German state of Brandenburg has a coat of arms depicting a red eagle.
The national colours of the Federal Republic of Germany are officially black, red, and gold, defined with the adoption of the West German flag as a tricolour with these colours in 1949. Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany from 1949 to 1990, and both Germanies retained the black, red, and gold colors on their respective flags. After German reunification in 1990, the united Germany retained the West German flag, thus retaining black, red, and gold as Germany's colors.
The coat of arms of Berlin is used by the German city state as well as the city itself. Introduced in 1954 for West Berlin, it shows a black bear on a white shield. On top of the shield is a special crown, created by the amalgamation of the mural crown of a city with the so-called people's crown, used in Germany to denote a republic. Berlin's various boroughs use their own emblems.
The coat of arms of the German federal-state of Lower Saxony shows a white Saxon Steed on a red background.
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a state of Germany. The greater arms of the state depict the bull's head of Mecklenburg, the griffin of Pomerania, and the red eagle of Brandenburg. The lesser arms depict only the bull's head of Mecklenburg and the griffin of Pomerania.
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.
Both the civil and state flag of the German state of Saxony feature a bicolour of white over green, similar to the Austrian province of Styria although they are historically not related to each other. The state flag is similar to the civil flag, except it is defaced in the centre with the coat of arms of Saxony. The colours of both flags were officially decided as state colours in 1815 in the Kingdom of Saxony. The aristocracy used mostly and in first time the quadrangular version and later the rectangular.
The civil flag that serves as the symbol of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, consists of five horizontal stripes, that are from the top to bottom: blue (ultramarine), white, yellow, white, and red (vermilion). It was designed by Norbert Buske and adopted on 29 January 1991. It is a combination of the historical flags of the Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania.
The flag of Baden-Württemberg, a state in Germany, has three variants. The civil flag has one design, while the state flag, has two designs. All three flags are a black over gold bi-color, while the state flag has one of two variants of the state arms centered on the flag. The flag, while identical, has no symbolism of or relation with the flag of the Austrian Empire.
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.
Margraviate of Brandenburg-Küstrin (1535–1571)
