Rainbow flag
The rainbow flag is a shape of the rainbow as a symbol. In numerous cultures around the world it stands for new beginnings, change and peace, and it is a symbol of tolerance and acceptance, the diversity of life forms, hope and longing.
Historical use
The Armenian painter Martiros Sarjan from New Nakhchivan designed a rainbow flag as a flag for the Democratic Republic of Armenia .
Peasant Wars
As early as the German Peasant Wars , the Bundschuh and the rainbow flag became symbols of a new era, hope and change. Thomas Müntzer linked social revolutionary demands with the proclamation of the Gospel . As with the Müntzer monument in Stolberg, he is often depicted with a rainbow flag in his fist.
Inca Empire and City of Cusco
The colors of the rainbow were also used in the flag of the Inca Empire , the Tahuantinsuyo. Today it is still the flag of the city of Cusco . The seven colors are arranged from red to purple.
PACE movement
One shape of the rainbow flag also stands for the international peace movement : the Bandiera della Pace has been the symbol of the Italian peace movement since 1961. It was designed by peace activist Aldo Capitini and was first used in a peace march on September 24, 1961.
As a sign of the protest against the Iraq war in 2003 , she fluttered from Italian house walls and balconies after calling Pace da tutti i balconi ('Peace from all balconies'). As an anti-war symbol, the rainbow flag was then also used outside Italy and became the most important symbol of the Iraq war and NATO opponents ( PACE - no to nato ) throughout Europe .
The seven colors are arranged from purple to red, so it is upside down in relation to the natural rainbow. The PACE flag shows both dark and light blue. The PACE flag usually bears the lettering PACE (dt. "Peace") in white letters , which is sometimes replaced on one or both sides by Peace , Paix , Shalom or the word " Frieden " in the respective national language.
The order of the colors is taken up in the song Rosso, Arancio, Giallo ... by Assalti Frontali :
"Rosso, arancio, giallo, verde, azzurro, indaco, violetto, sul ponte sventola bandiera
Rosso, arancio, giallo, verde, azzurro, indaco, violetto
Questo e il mio colore, il posto dove stare"
The color sequence blue-light blue- violet- green-yellow-orange-red and the Pace lettering asymmetrically on violet-green is also widespread .
Symbol of the lesbian and gay movement
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The rainbow flag has been an international gay and lesbian symbol since the 1970s .
The rainbow banner used in the lesbian and gay movement differs from the PACE flag in three details:
- This rainbow banner contains only six colors.
- The hues are arranged in reverse, with the reds on top and the blues on the bottom.
- It has no lettering.
In addition to the pink triangle as marking in the gay inmates Nazi concentration camps had to wear the red ribbon , the red bow that as a solidarity sign for HIV -infected and AIDS is -Kranke and the lambda symbol, which is primarily in the GDR spread was, the rainbow flag is a globally established symbol of the lesbian and gay movement.
The rainbow flag was designed by the American artist Gilbert Baker for Gay Freedom Day 1978, the forerunner of later Gay Prides. It is a symbol of lesbian and gay pride, as well as the diversity of the lifestyle of lesbians and gays.
However, nine years earlier, at the funeral of actress Judy Garland, who was very popular in gay circles, in 1969, some gay men wore rainbow flags. These were an allusion to one of the most famous songs of Garland, Over the Rainbow from the movie The Wizard of Oz ( The Wizard of Oz ), a song about a place "where everything better and more just is." Whether the rainbow flag emerged from it is disputed.
In November 1978, Harvey Milk , an openly gay member of the San Francisco City Council , was murdered. In his honor and as a token of solidarity, the organizers of the 1979 gay parade decided to use Baker's flag as a symbol during the protest and funeral march. In 2014, the City of San Francisco established rainbow stripes at the main intersection in the middle of Castro Street as a pedestrian crossing instead of the usual zebra crossings.
The original version of the flag consisted of eight colored stripes. Gilbert Baker turned to the San Francisco-based Paramount Flag Company for the mass production and sale of his "Gay Flag" . Since the bright pink ("hot pink") dyed by Baker himself could not be produced industrially at the time, it had to be reduced to seven strips.
When the flag was used on the protest and funeral march in November 1979, the committee removed the turquoise stripe in order to split the colors evenly along the parade route: three colors on each side of the street. At the same time, royal blue was used instead of indigo blue.
- (Hot Pink = "sexuality")
- Red = "life"
- Orange = "health"
- Yellow = "sunlight"
- Green = "nature"
- (Turquoise = "art")
- Royal blue = "harmony"
- Violet = "spirit"
Occasionally a black stripe is added to remind of the AIDS problem. First, the rainbow flag was shown the other way around, namely from purple to red. After the feminists chose violet as “their color”, the rainbow was turned, red was now on top. In the meantime there are efforts to re-establish the original eight-stripe flag, since Hot Pink can now be produced and no area should be excluded. For this purpose, on June 15, 2004, the world's largest rainbow flag (2 km × 5 m, 3 t) was stretched along Duval Street in Key West .
In Germany, the rainbow flag was first hoisted on a public building in 1996. At the suggestion of the former Berlin-Brandenburg Gay Association SVD (today LSVD ), the flag was hoisted at the town halls of Schöneberg, Tiergarten and Kreuzberg on the occasion of the Lesbian and Gay City Festival and the Christopher Street Day in Berlin. This brought about the so-called “Berlin Flag War ”, in which the then Berlin Senator for the Interior, Jörg Schönbohm , tried unsuccessfully for several years to prevent the flag from being raised in the Berlin districts with reference to the Berlin Flag Ordinance. Since Klaus Wowereit took office as Governing Mayor in 2001, he and representatives of the LSVD have hoisted the rainbow flags annually on Christopher Street Day at the Red City Hall. LSVD managing director Jörg Steinert now speaks of a Berlin “tradition”. During the construction work on the Rotes Rathaus, the central flag is raised with the Governing Mayor, LSVD Berlin-Brandenburg and a prominent person (which changes every year) at the Nollendorfplatz underground station.
From June 1 to 30, 2001, on the occasion of the events surrounding the Europride 2001, the largest rainbow flag in Europe (60 m × 6 m), donated by the Austrian Gay Professionals association, hung on the Vienna Danube Tower . The "opening event" took place in the presence of Gilbert Baker. Then the flag went to the next Europride city, Cologne.
At the beginning of June 2015, the flag was included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In July 2018, six people, LGBT activists from different countries, traveled to Russia wearing t-shirts colored accordingly, put themselves together to form a “flag” and had themselves photographed. This action, via social media dissemination, led to a false belief that the rainbow flag is illegal in Russia. Reference is made to the 2013 law against “homosexual propaganda” against minors. In fact, in June 2015 there was only one amendment proposed by Duma deputy Aleksej Lisovenko (Алексей Лисовенко), which included a ban on the rainbow flag. However, this proposal was rejected the same day.
Flag of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast
The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in southeast Russia near the Chinese border also uses a rainbow flag as its flag.
Rainbow colors from Greenpeace
The environmental protection organization Greenpeace also uses the rainbow symbol on flags, but in the form of a seven-colored bow on a (mostly) white background. Linked to this is a story circulating in the hippie movement about an Indian rainbow warrior prophecy, which was or is also eponymous and identity-giving for the Rainbow Family .
International Co-operative Alliance
The International Co-operative Alliance ( ICA ), an international alliance of cooperatives , has also used the rainbow and the rainbow flag with seven colors as symbols since 1925. In order to avoid confusion with other rainbow flags today, a new logo has been used since 2001. It shows the part of a six-colored rainbow from which stylized doves of peace emerge. The seventh color, purple, can be found in the lettering below.
Characters
In the Unicode standard, the flag can be displayed as a combination of the emojis ?️ (white flag) and ? (rainbow), connected with a connector without width: ?️?.
Similar symbols
- Peace sign
- Leather Pride Flag - a symbol of the gay leather and BDSM subculture.
- Bisexual flag
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Neue Zürcher Zeitung : Protest against the ban on peace flags in Strasbourg . March 24, 2009.
- Jump up ↑ flags for peace
- ↑ Erin Allday: Gilbert Baker, designer of gay pride rainbow flag, dies. sfgate.com, April 1, 2017, accessed April 4, 2017 .
- ↑ Axel Schock, Karin Schupp: Out-Takes , Querverlag , Berlin March 2005, ISBN 3-89656-116-2 , p. 177, keyword: "Rainbow flag"
- ↑ The rainbow flag is rarer at the town hall bz-berlin.de, June 3, 2010, accessed April 4, 2017 .
- ↑ Press release : AGPRO attach the largest rainbow flag in Europe to the Danube Tower ( memento of the original from July 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , June 1, 2001
- ↑ Joe / MoMA: NYC: MoMA Adds Gilbert Baker's Rainbow Flag To Their Permanent Collection. In: Joe. My. God. June 5, 2015, accessed April 4, 2017 .
- ↑ Activists “smuggle” the rainbow flag into Russia orf.at, July 10, 2018, accessed July 10, 2018.
- ↑ ICA website
- ↑ ?️? Rainbow Flag Emoji. In: Emojipedia . Retrieved February 18, 2018 .
