Flag and coat of arms of Austria: history and meaning

Austria has a long and complicated history of the struggle for independence, which includes the rule of a foreign dynasty and the later emergence of revolutionary movements. State symbols have a profound meaning, it manages to convey a lot of information about the past, on the basis of events which developed Austria. The flag and the coat of arms of this country are united by one color solution and show a combination of two horizontal red stripes and one white one between them. What does it mean and what symbols are hidden in these two state signs?

Excursion to the history

To understand which symbols are used by Austrians and why, it is worthwhile to understand some historical facts. The German name of Austria in translation means "eastern state".

Formed it, having won this territory from Bavaria, Emperor Otto the First. This happened in 955, and two centuries later, in 1156, the lands were liberated from the Bavarian government finally and transformed into a duchy. By 1453, local rulers officially became Archdukes. The Austrian throne was occupied by the representatives of the Habsburgs, who subsequently became its permanent owners until the very bourgeois revolution in the twentieth century. Therefore, the family symbols and flags of those who were in power served as national symbols, and there were practically no people's symbols, like, for example, the revolutionary French.

The appearance of state symbols

Officially, the flag and the coat of arms of Austria first appeared in wide use in 1918, when a bourgeois-democratic revolution took place in the country and a republic was proclaimed. The Habsburg dynasty fell, taking with it its black and gold symbolism. The history of the state in a new capacity began on November 12, 1918, and its flag was legislatively approved a year later, in October 1919. The rectangular panel had three equal horizontal strips. The upper and lower were bright red, and the central one was white. In the middle was depicted the emblem of the state in the form of a black crowned eagle with a flap of the flag on his chest and a sickle and a hammer in his paws. The national flag differs from the state flag by the absence of such an image.

Kind of coat of arms after World War II

After the victory over the fascist invaders, changes were made to the state emblem of Austria. To remind of the release, an image of the broken chains on the paws was added. Thus, such a picture does not apply to communism, which some people think about when they see a sickle and a hammer in the eagle's paws. The coat of arms of Austria, whose photographs demonstrate its modern appearance, began to be used from May 1, 1945. Finally it was approved a little later - on March 28, 1984. According to the law, the flag was adopted as a red-white-red cloth with a length that is one and a half times wider than the width, and the coat of arms of Austria retained the image of a black eagle with a gold sickle, a hammer and a silver broken chain on its paws.

Value of used colors

It seems that the coat of arms of Austria is not so ancient. Despite this, his story begins much earlier than the twentieth century. It goes back to the distant Middle Ages. Austria, whose flag and coat of arms was officially absent due to the use of the Habsburg family symbolism, applied the red-white-red combination already in the thirteenth century. Such a shield, which is now the central fragment of the coat of arms, was then found on the prints of the Babenberg dynasty. The scarlet-silver-scarlet banners are associated with the fact that Duke Leopold the Fifth fought with the Saracens at Accra so cruelly that all his cloak was soaked with enemy blood. There was only a narrow white band. Clothes duke and became the prototype image, which is now showing the coat of arms of Austria.

What does the eagle mean? He is also associated with the Babenberg dynasty. Henry II used an eagle on the seal, and in Leopold the Fifth the knights went on the crusades under the banner with the indicated image. It is interesting that the motif with such a bird was used in the Habsburgs, in contrast to the flag. But then the coat of arms was executed in black and yellow colors, which were attributed to this dynasty. The coat of arms of the Habsburgs portrayed a red lion on a gold shield, but the black double-headed eagle was used in those distant times.