Flight (heraldry)

Open flight, as heraldic figure ( Eisleben  DE)

Closed flight, as a helmet ornament "silver on the front and covered with a black gear, red on the back" ( von Zimmermann, 1877 )

Half flight, as heraldic figure ( Vechigen  CH)

Lying red eagle wing covered with a golden moon (clasp), front with an eagle head turned to the left, closed with a clover leaf at the back ( Heinsheim  DE)

Flight ( pl. Flights ), also wing , is a name for both wings of a bird in heraldry .

Design and use

The flight occurs in coats of arms , but more often as helmet gems . A distinction is made between an open flight , a closed flight and a half flight :

• If the helmet and the extended flight are shown frontally to the viewer, one speaks of an open flight.
• In a closed flight, the helmet and the two wings are shown seen from one side or at a slight angle, whereby the rear wing must be a little visible.
• If only one wing can be seen, it is half a flight.

The hand wings always point outwards by default, or at half flight to the heraldic left and at the tips upwards (raised wings); if they point upwards (point in front, heraldic right), the flight is lying down ; if they point down, the flight is prone and overturned - and accordingly left-facing and left-lying in a mirrored position.

Half the flight with a claw (catch) on the wing ( claw wing ) can be found in many coats of arms. The claw preferably holds a sword.

If an open flight is strongly abstracted and made rectangular, it is a banner flight .

A special feature is the depiction of a kite flying in the coat of arms . For this purpose, only the skin wings with the claws of the dragon are shown as a separate coat of arms.

• Examples
• 

  Helmet gem: Open flight ( Herb Erbs  PL)

• 

  Open flight ( Albrecht Dürer )

• 

  Open flight ( Herb Nieczuja  PL)

• 

  Half flight turned to the right ( Johann Hunyadi )

• 

  Green Claw Wings ( Lauterstein  DE)

• 

  Claw wings as a helmet ornament (heraldic pattern)

• 

  Open banner flight ( Bakum  DE)

• 

  Family coat of arms of the Counts of Nassau (Ottonian line)

• 

  Coat of arms of the Lords of Üsenberg

literature

• Gert Oswald : Lexicon of Heraldry. VEB Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1984 (also: Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-411-02149-7 ).

Web links

Commons : Flight (bird's wings) in heraldry  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Bernhard Peter: Introduction to Heraldry: The Flight

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Klammer's little heraldry: The helmet ornament ( Memento from September 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Examples of a closed flight in Scheibler's Wappenbuch : No. 00420; 00459, 00495; online , Digitale-sammlungen.de
3. ↑ Antonio Manno (Ed.): Vocabolario araldico ufficiale. Seguito dal Dizionarietto di voci araldiche francesi tradotte in italiano. Civelli, Rome 1907.