Zurich municipal coat of arms
The municipal coats of arms used in the canton of Zurich go back to the introduction of bailiwick, official, local and village coats of arms in the 16th century, mostly based on the coats of arms of medieval families from the regional small nobility.
The modern community coats of arms go back to the work of the community coat of arms commission of the Antiquarian Society in Zurich , which determined the coats of arms of the then 179 communities in Zurich between 1926 and 1936 ; eight municipalities lost their status as municipalities when they were incorporated into Zurich in 1934 . The municipal mergers recent (2014-2019) reduced the number of municipalities per 1 January 2019. 162. In addition, leading many districts, lodgings and former civil parishes own coat of arms.
Early history
Only four of today's communities had their own coat of arms seals in the Middle Ages: Zurich (1250), Winterthur (1264), Grüningen (1370) and Elgg (1371). The use of village or local coats of arms goes back to the end of the 15th century, when the coats of arms of individual bailiwicks or offices were depicted for the first time (mostly based on coats of arms of long-extinct noble families from the respective area). The Zurich Chronicle by Gerold Edlibach (around 1490) shows the coats of arms of towns and bailiwicks as well as the coats of arms of the parishes on Lake Zurich (the Kilchhövinen collieries on Lake Zurich) . In the 16th century, village coats of arms appeared more and more on maps (canton map by Jos Murer 1566) and in coats-of-arms discs (official disc of the rule Grüningen 1587, official disc of Zurich 1544). Numerous office and community discs from the 17th century have been preserved. After the founding of the modern canton of Zurich and the modern political communities in the early 18th century, the rural communities began to use coats of arms with greater self-confidence, without the respective coats of arms having had official status at the cantonal level. In the middle of the 19th century, the Zurich lithographer Johannes Krauer published a table with colored representations of the coats of arms of all Zurich municipalities (the "Krauertafel"). This was hastily put together and contained numerous errors and omissions.
Adjustment of the municipal coats of arms
At the beginning of the 20th century it became fashionable to provide community halls, flags of local associations, letterheads, etc. with community coats of arms. Due to the contradictions between the widespread "mourning table" and individual local traditions, the State Archives in Zurich asked numerous questions. In 1917, the archive officer Friedrich Hegi carried out systematic research. In order to determine where old coats of arms were present and from what time they came, he sent questionnaires to the municipal offices of all municipalities in the canton, but the answer remained incomplete.
In the 1920s, interest in municipal coats of arms increased in Switzerland. Kaffee Hag published collective pictures of Swiss municipal coats of arms for advertising purposes, and commissions for research into the municipal coats of arms were set up in numerous cantons. Such a commission was created in Zurich in 1925 at the suggestion of Hans Hess in a letter to the board of the Antiquarian Society in Zurich. On the one hand, the commission collected historical representations of local coats of arms and, on the other hand, suggested establishing official, modern municipal coats of arms. The municipal coats of arms should be based on historical coats of arms if possible. The coats of arms of noble families who had rulership rights in a village were preferred. Only for the coat of arms of Bertschikon was there no historical connection at all. At the same time, "overloaded" coats of arms had to be simplified and heraldically "false" ones improved.
In addition, identical coats of arms should be avoided, which in individual cases in which two municipalities claimed the same coat of arms, led to arbitration talks between municipal representatives. In most parishes, the parish council finally gave its own written approval to the proposed blazon . Therefore, the introduction of the vast majority of the municipal coats of arms in the Canton of Zurich dates back to the late 1920s. Authorities, still undecided at the beginning of the 1930s, were put under pressure when the commission announced that the coat of arms in question would simply be missing from the planned coat of arms. In thirteen localities, namely Bülach , Dietlikon , Humlikon , Hüntwangen , Marthalen , Oberembrach , Oberrieden ZH , Oberweningen , Otelfingen , Regensberg , Uster , Wangen and Zumikon , the municipal council could not decide on a coat of arms and presented the question to the municipal assembly.
When five coats of arms were approved by the municipal authorities, they were combined as a series and issued as a colored postcard, in a total of 35 series between 1926 and 1936. The last four coats of arms ( Marthalen , Uetikon am See , Volken and Wangen) were finally published individually in 1936. The success of the commission was recognized in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of April 29, 1936: “Like some cantons in western Switzerland, the canton of Zurich is now in the pleasant position of having a complete collection of the municipal coats of arms of its area, which is significant are, without exception, coats of arms that have been officially recognized by the municipalities concerned. ». On November 7, 1936, the municipal coat of arms commission, which had now fulfilled its mandate, was dissolved.
Municipal coat of arms
After 1940, books of municipal arms appeared in various cantons (Solothurn 1941, St. Gallen 1947, Schaffhausen 1951, Basel-Landschaft 1952, Graubünden 1953, Thurgau 1960). This led to a demand in Zurich for a corresponding publication, and in 1969 the Antiquarian Society decided to revise the series in book form.
The content of the blazon should be left as it is, but formulated more precisely and the graphic representation should be gently modernized. The latter point led to resistance from individual municipalities who wanted to keep the representation from around 1930 unchanged, while other municipalities had in the meantime independently and in some cases radically modernized the graphic representation. So there was already a gap between traditional heraldry, which regards the blazon as the only decisive factor, and the use of municipal coats of arms as a logo in the visual appearance of an authority.
The heraldist in charge, Hans Kläui, tried to make himself heard with an article that was distributed to the municipalities in a special edition in order to clarify (from the point of view of heraldry) “dilettantism”, “wrong ideas” and “misunderstandings”. Publication was delayed by the death of the draftsman Walter Käch in 1970. Käch was replaced by the heraldist Fritz Brunner, and the register of the municipal coat of arms was finally published in 1977.
Church Logos
After 2000, it became increasingly common for municipalities to define an official logo in addition to a coat of arms , which is used on official websites and printed publications, often together with a slogan . These logos are partly based on the municipal coats of arms (with the addition of lettering or graphic elements), in some cases they are completely independent of the coat of arms. For example, the municipality of Bubikon introduced a logo in 2011 that added a “stylized staircase gable” in light gray to the municipality's coat of arms. In 2007, the Bassersdorf community created a logo including the zip code 8303, in the form of “8303assersdorf”.
The Canton of Zurich has its own corporate design, adopted by the government council in 2014.
See also
literature
- The cleanup of the Zurich municipal coats of arms. In: Mitteilungen der Antiquarian Gesellschaft in Zürich 49 (1977), pp. 15–19 ( digitized version ).
- Peter Ziegler (ed.): The municipal coat of arms of the canton of Zurich. Antiquarian Society in Zurich, Zurich 1977 (coat of arms drawings by Walter Käch and Fritz Brunner)
- Max Korthals: 75 Years of the Municipal Coat of Arms Commission - What municipalities are up to. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , January 4, 2001.
- Joseph Melchior Galliker: Swiss coats of arms and flags, Vol. 9. Zug 2006.
- Hans Rüegg: Zurich village coat of arms. Swiss Coat of Arms and Flags Foundation, Issues 10/11 (2007/8).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bertschikon near Attikon zu Wiesendangen , 2014; Sternenberg zu Bauma , 2015; Kyburg zu Illnau-Effretikon (until 1974 Illnau ), 2016; Hirzel zu Horgen , 2018; Hofstetten zu Elgg , 2018; Oberstammheimm Unterstammheim and Waltalingen merged as Stammheim ZH ; Hütten and Schönenberg zu Wädenswil , 2019.
- ↑ Jürg Schneider: Glass painting. Catalog of the collection of the Swiss National Museum. Zurich 1970, No. 231.
- ^ Paul Boesch: Swiss glass paintings abroad: the former collection in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (addendum). In: Journal for Swiss Archeology and Art History 6 (1944). Here: «Fragmentary office disc from Zurich, around 1600. 32x21 cm. From a rectangular status and office disk with 29–31 office shields (8–9 in the top row), such as the disk by HH Engelhart in the Musée Ariana in Geneva (Deonna, no. 119) or the disk by Josias Murer from 1602 (Sudeley Coll., No. 38), a smaller format was created by omitting the lion's bodies holding the imperial crown and the status shields attached under the imperial shield. Due to the associated shortening of all four sides, the number of office shields also had to be reduced. There are now 5 at the top (Regensdorf, Maschwanden, Kiburg, Stein, Andelfingen), at the bottom 5 (Sellenbüren, Zollicken, Stäfen, Horgen, Meilen), 4 left (Fryamt, Louffen, Elgg, Nüwampt) and 4 right (Stamen, Hedingen) , Regensberg, Bülach), there are 18 office shields in all, some of which are incorrectly labeled: "Hegi" on the Elgg coat of arms, "Rümlang" on the Hedingen coat of arms. "
- ↑ Ziegler (1977), p. 35 .
- ^ Hans Kläui: Fundamental questions of public heraldry. In: Zürcher Chronik, vol. 38, H. 4 (1970), p. 97.
- ↑ bubikon.ch
- ↑ Dorf-Blitz 9/2007 . «8303 Bassersdorf gave up its community slogan seven years ago - in Switzerland the villages like to advertise with“ cosmopolitan ”or“ humane ”; Words that could also come from the Pope or from Barack Obama. Instead, the community now appears as follows: 8303assersdorf. The postcode as a program. In the Tages-Anzeiger, the mayor said: "8303 is elegant and typographically idiosyncratic." He sounded pretty busy and proud. " Enjoyable Swiss Post identity in four digits: a declaration of love to the postcode on your fiftieth birthday. In: Tages-Anzeiger , July 15, 2014.
- ↑ A “logo system” made up of lions (“in a contemporary interpretation of pictorial representations”), a flag (“expresses […] pragmatic, but self-confident modernity”) and lettering ( Helvetica Black). Corporate Design Manual. Feurer Network AG, Canton of Zurich, 2014.