Flag and coat of arms of Austria: the history and meaning

Austria had a long and complex history of the struggle for independence, including the rule of a foreign dynasty and later the emergence of revolutionary movements.State symbols has a profound meaning, she manages to convey a lot of information about the past, based on events that develops Austria.Flag and coat of arms of the country combined with one color solution and demonstrate a combination of two horizontal red stripes and one white in between.What does it mean and what the characters are hidden in these two government signs?

Patrimony

To understand how symbols are used and why the Austrians, is to deal with some of the historical facts.Austria German name means "Eastern State".

educated him, having won this territory from Bavaria, Emperor Otto the Great.This happened in 955, and two centuries later, in 1156, the land freed from the Bavarian authorities, and finally transformed into the Duchy.By 1453 local rulers officially became the Archduke.Austrian throne occupied by representatives of the Habsburgs, who later turned out to be its permanent owner right up to the bourgeois revolution in the twentieth century.Therefore, national symbols were family coats of arms and flags of those in power, but directly to people's symbols, such as, for example, the French revolutionary, almost was not.

emergence of state symbols

official flag and emblem of Austria for the first time appeared in wide use in 1918, when the country there was a bourgeois-democratic revolution and the republic was proclaimed.Habsburg dynasty collapsed, taking with them their black and gold symbols.History of a new quality to the twelfth November 1918, and its flag was legislatively approved a year later, in October 1919.The rectangular flag had three equal strips.The top and bottom were bright red, and the center - white.In the middle of the state coat of arms is depicted as a black crowned eagle shield with the colors of the flag on the chest with a hammer and sickle in his paws.The national flag is different from the absence of such public image.

view of the emblem after the Second World

After the victory over the fascist invaders in the national emblem of Austria were amended.To remind the exemption was added to the picture of broken chains on the feet.Thus, this pattern does not apply to communism, which some think if a hammer and sickle in the clutches of an eagle.Coat of arms of Austria, whose photos demonstrate its modern form, has been used since the first May 1945.Finally, it adopted a little later - the twenty-eighth March 1984.According to the law, the flag was adopted as the red-white-red flag with a length that is one and a half times the width, and the coat of arms of Austria retained the image of a black eagle with a golden sickle, a hammer and a silver chain on broken legs.

Meaning of colors used

seems that the coat of arms of Austria is not so ancient.Despite this, his story begins long before the twentieth century.It is rooted in the distant Middle Ages.Austria, flag and emblem which is officially absent from the use of the symbols of the Habsburg family, applied the red-white-red combination is already in the thirteenth century.This panel, which is now the central fragment of the emblem, then met on the seals of the dynasty Babenberg.Chervleno-silver and scarlet banners attributed to the fact that the Fifth Duke Leopold fought the Saracens at Accra so cruel that all his cape soaked in blood enemy.There was only a narrow white stripe.Clothing Duke and became the prototype of the image, which now shows the coat of arms of Austria.

What is the eagle?He also connected with the dynasty Babenberg.Henry II used an eagle on the seal, and Leopold Fifth Knights were in the Crusades under the banner of the specified image.Interestingly, the motif with the bird and Habsburgs used, unlike flag.But then the coat of arms was made in black and yellow colors that belong to this dynasty.Family coat of arms of the Habsburg displays a red lion on a gold shield, but the black double-headed eagle was used in those days.