The national symbols of the Czech Republic are flags, heraldry, cultural expressions and other symbols that represent the Czech Republic, Czech people and their history, culture and nationhood. There are six official symbols which are declared in the Constitution of the Czech Republic. However many other historical, cultural and geographical symbols of the Czech republic and Czech people do exist.
Article 14 of the Constitution of the Czech Republic lists national symbols: the coat of arms, the official colours (white, red, and blue), the national flag, the flag of the president, the official seal and the national anthem. Act No. 3/1993 refers to the national symbols and their usage. [1]
The Czech republic includes three historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. Each region has got its own symbols.
Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.
Moravia is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
The Czechs, or the Czech people, are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, culture, history, and the Czech language.
Moravians are a West Slavic ethnographic group from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, who speak the Moravian dialects of Czech or Common Czech or a mixed form of both. Along with the Silesians of the Czech Republic, a part of the population to identify ethnically as Moravian has registered in Czech censuses since 1991. The figure has fluctuated and in the 2011 census, 6.01% of the Czech population declared Moravian as their ethnicity. Smaller pockets of people declaring Moravian ethnicity are also native to neighboring Slovakia.
The Czech lands or the Bohemian lands is a historical-geographical term that, in a historical context, refers the three historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia together before Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic were formed. Together the three have formed the Czech part of Czechoslovakia since 1918 and the Czech Republic since 1 January 1993.
The flag of the Czech Republic is the same as the flag of the former Czechoslovakia. Upon the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in December 1992, the Czech Republic kept the Czechoslovak flag while Slovakia adopted its own flag. The first flag of Czechoslovakia was based on the flag of Bohemia and was white over red. This was almost identical to the flag of Poland, so a blue triangle was added at the hoist in 1920. The flag was banned by the Nazis in 1939 as they established a government nominally in control of Bohemia and Moravia, and a horizontal tricolour of white, red, and blue was used for the duration of the war. The 1920–1939 flag was restored in 1945.
František Palacký was a Czech historian and politician, the most influential person of the Czech National Revival, called "Father of the Nation".
The flag of Bohemia is a historic flag, which now forms part of the design in the modern flag of the Czech Republic. The flag, a horizontal bicolour, was based on the colours of the former monarchs of Bohemia.
This article deals with historic administrative divisions of Czechoslovakia up to 1992, when the country was split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The coat of arms of the Czech Republic is divided into two principal variants. Greater coat of arms displays the three historical regions—the Czech lands—which make up the nation. Lesser coat of arms displays lone silver double-tailed lion in red shield. The current coats of arms, which was adopted in 1992, was designed by Czech heraldist Jiří Louda.
The Czech Republic's official long and short names at the United Nations are Česká republika and Česko in Czech, and the Czech Republic and Czechia in English. All these names derive from the name of the Czechs, the West Slavic ethnolinguistic group native to the Czech Republic. Czechia, the official English short name specified by the Czech government, is used by many international organisations.
The coat of arms of Czechoslovakia were changed many times during Czechoslovakia’s history, some alongside each other. This reflects the turbulent history of the country and a wish to use appropriate territorial coats of arms.
The history of Moravia, one of the Czech lands, is diverse and characterized by many periods of foreign governance.
Horácko is a cultural and ethnographic region in the southeast Bohemia and southwest Moravia and middle part of present-day Czech Republic.
The Margraviate of Moravia was one of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown within the Holy Roman Empire and then Austria-Hungary, existing from 1182 to 1918. It was officially administered by a margrave in cooperation with a provincial diet. It was variously a de facto independent state, and also subject to the Duchy, later the Kingdom of Bohemia. It comprised the historical region called Moravia, which lies within the present-day Czech Republic.
An official appearance of the flag of Moravia, unlike the provincial Moravian coat of arms, does not exist, because such a flag has never been granted to Moravia. However, there are several documented variants of Moravian flags used in the past. The first recorded version dates from the mid-13th century.
The coat of arms of Moravia has been used for centuries to represent Moravia, a traditional province in the present-day Czech Republic. The coat of arms is also present in a field of the coat of arms of the Czech Republic.
The coat of arms of Lower Silesia, and simultaneously of Silesia, shows a black eagle with silver crescent with cross in the middle on its chest on a golden background. It has been assumed in the tradition that the coat of arms and colors of Lower Silesia are simultaneously used as symbols of Silesia as a whole.
