Coat of arms of the Electoral Palatinate
1: In black a golden, red-crowned lion, turned to the left.
2: a golden orb in red.
3: Slanted awakened by silver and blue.
On the helmet a seated golden, red-crowned lion between 2 silver-blue waved buffalo horns.
Shield holder: 2 golden red-tongued lions
The coat of arms of the Electoral Palatinate goes back to the 13th century. It was run by the Count Palatinate near Rhine and the Elector Palatinate , the Wittelsbachers , until the Electoral Palatinate was dissolved at the beginning of the 19th century.
The coat of arms underwent several changes over time due to territorial and rank changes and can still be found today on old castles or churches. The design of many of the municipal coats of arms, with the silver-blue diamonds or the golden Palatinate lion, is a reminder of the former belonging to the Electoral Palatinate.
lion
In 1214 the palatinate near Rhine was transferred to Otto II from Wittelsbach . In 1228 he came of age and took over government affairs. A year later, in 1229, he introduced a new coat of arms, the lion. The lion had already been wielded by the Guelphs , who held the office of count palatine before the Wittelsbach family, and before that, Konrad (1156–1195) from Staufer had minted coins with the lion. The colors of the Hohenstaufen gold and black also speak for this derivation. In Konrad von Mure's work Clipearius Teutonicorum , which was created in the middle of the 13th century, the tinging of the Palatinate coat of arms can be demonstrated for the first time: a golden lion in black.
In Otto II's coat of arms, the lion was initially uncrowned, but it was soon depicted with a crown. Perhaps the crown refers to the office of chairman of the prince's court and the imperial vicarage , which the count palatine exercised when the royal throne was vacant. The red color of the crown in the coat of arms can be found for the first time in the Zurich coat of arms roll in the first half of the 14th century.
Wake up
From 1231 Otto II was also Duke in Bavaria. The sloping shield originally came from the Counts of Bogen . After they died out in the male line, their possessions fell to the Duke of Bavaria in 1242. It is proven that Otto II's son Ludwig II ran the Wecken for the first time in 1247 . His brother Heinrich XIII. used the new shield in 1253, i.e. before the Bavarian division of 1255 .
The colors silver and blue can be found for the first time in the Armorial Wijnbergen , a French coat of arms collection from 1270/85. In 1462 the number of diamonds was set at 21. But it was often deviated from in the coats of arms afterwards.
Wittelsbacher
The Wittelsbachers now used either the lion or the wake shield without a rule being discernible. Both appear side by side in 1271 by Heinrich XIII. , Duke of Lower Bavaria and in 1289 with Count Palatine Ludwig II. The two coats of arms are united in a shield in 1275 in a seal from Neustadt an der Haardt , but this cannot be observed for the Count Palatine and Dukes. Likewise, a preference for one of the two coats of arms in the various lines of the Wittelsbach family can not be ascertained, not even after the final split into a Palatinate and a Bavarian branch in 1329.
Ruprecht I introduced the squared coat of arms before he was elector of the Palatinate, i.e. before 1353, whereby the higher-ranking fields 1 and 4 were reserved for the lion. All other Wittelsbacher lines gradually adopted this form.
Electoral Palatinate
With Elector Ruprecht III. The special development of the Palatinate coat of arms began at the end of the 14th century. A single red sign, the so-called shelf sign, has now been added . The meaning has not been clarified with certainty, but it probably refers to the special role that the Palatinate Elector exercised as imperial vicar. This rank had already been finalized in the Golden Bull in 1356 and in 1394 Ruprecht II took over the imperial administration while King Wenceslas was imprisoned . But in 1396 Wenzel appointed his brother Sigismund as imperial vicar for life. Presumably to demonstrate his claim, Ruprecht II used the shelf sign. Since Ludwig III. the lion, the awakening and the shelf sign were either placed next to each other or 2: 1, with the red sign always in third place in the ranking.
In 1544, thanks to the permission of Emperor Charles V, the shelf sign was replaced with the symbol of the dignity of the ore , the golden orb in a red field. The rulers of Saxony and Mark Brandenburg referred to their ore offices in their coats of arms since 1371 and 1466 respectively . The Palatinate electors usually led this new field in the first place in the coat of arms, and a union with the lion and the awakenings often took place in a shield, either as a heart shield on the squared coat of arms or, since Ottheinrich , inserted in the split shield.
It was not until the 16th century that the lion was slowly symbolized for the Palatinate and the Wecken for Bavaria. This was expressed in the fact that in the squared coat of arms of the Palatinate, the lion was placed in the higher-ranking fields 1 and 4, and vice versa in Bavaria.
During the Thirty Years' War , Friedrich V lost his electoral dignity in 1623, and with it the archetypal dinner shield to Maximilian I of Bavaria. However, both Friedrich V and his son Karl I. Ludwig continued to run the orb to demonstrate their claim. In the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 it was decided that Bavaria was allowed to keep the electoral dignity of the Archdeal Office. To compensate for this, a new, eighth electoral dignity was created for the Palatinate, which was linked to the office of arch-treasurer . The imperial crown was intended as a symbol, but it was never used. Instead, in protest, they returned to the single red sign, which was now intended as a waiting sign to demonstrate the claim to the lost orb.
In 1685 the Pfalz-Simmern line died out and the Pfalz-Neuburg line followed in the electoral dignity . This had registered in the past claims to several lands and their coat of arms in accordance multiplied . The new Elector Philipp Wilhelm brought in his collective coat of arms, so that the new coat of arms of the Electorate of the Palatinate now had nine fields and the heart shield: Pfalz, Bavaria, Jülich (in gold a black lion), Kleve (in red a gold Glevenrad), Berg (in silver a red lion), Veldenz (a blue lion in silver), Mark (a silver-red bar in 3 rows in gold), Ravensberg (3 red rafters in silver) and Moers (a black bar in gold).
During the War of the Spanish Succession , the Bavarian Elector was declared an imperial ban. Johann Wilhelm received the old Palatinate cure with the Reichstruchsessenamt and from 1708 again had the orb in the coat of arms. In the Rastatt Peace of 1714, Bavaria was given back the rank. Johann Wilhelm and his brother Carl Philipp initially refused to give up the official coat of arms, but in 1718 Carl Philipp finally had to submit and returned to the Wartschild.
With his death in 1742 the Pfalz-Neuburg line died out and the Pfalz-Sulzbach line followed with Carl Theodor . He had inherited the claim to Bergen op Zoom (in red over a green Dreiberg, 3 silver trays) from his mother and therefore extended the coat of arms of the Electorate of the Palatinate in 1744. In 1777 he also inherited Bavaria, which settled the old dispute over the imperial orb. In addition, the claim to Sponheim (red-silver box) was included in the Electoral Palatinate-Bavarian coat of arms, which is probably related to the Sponheim division in 1776.
After Carl Theodor's death, the Pfalz-Birkenfeld line followed with Maximilian Joseph on the Electoral Palatinate-Bavarian throne. The last elector added Rappoltstein (3 red shields in silver) and Hohenack (3 gold-crowned black raven heads in silver ) to the coat of arms .
Coat of arms
The upper arms experienced similar development of the shield over time multiple changes. At the beginning, the representations of the Palatinate and Bavarian Wittelsbachers are similar. The first helmet ornament is known from the year 1256, it consisted of two buffalo horns studded with linden sticks . In addition, the crowned, seated lion has appeared as a helmet ornament since 1314, with the Palatine for the first time with Ruprecht I. Lion and Horns have existed together since 1358, here too the Palatinate followed later with Friedrich I.
In the Bavarian line, the roughened flight appeared in competition with these representations from the 14th century , initially alone, then in combination with the lion. This development cannot be observed in the Palatinate. In the 16th century, a simplification of the upper coat of arms began in Germany; in the Electoral Palatinate, the electoral hat was primarily chosen.
literature
- Harald Drös: Heidelberg coat of arms book . Heidelberg 1991, ISBN 3-924973-44-X .
- Harald Drös: lion, diamonds, red shield. On the coat of arms of the Palatine Wittelsbacher in the late Middle Ages , in: Staatl. Locks and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg and the GLA Karlsruhe (ed.): The grip on the crown. The Palatine County near the Rhine in the Middle Ages (= treasures from our castles. A number of the state castles and gardens 4). Regensburg 2000, pp. 105-116.
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul Ganz: History of heraldic art in Switzerland in the 12th and 13th centuries . Frauenfeld 1899, p. 178
