NS
Vol 7 No 1-2 (December 2001)
A
unique grant of arms: Braunschweig
by Arnold Rabbow
BRAUNSCHWEIG (Brunswick), population 250 000, at present second largest city in Lower Saxony, Germany, enjoys a special status among German cities in several ways. It was founded probably as early as the 9th century and named Brunswik, i e “Bruno’s village” after a legendary Count Bruno. (Strangely enough the English spelling Brunswick has remained closer to the original place-name than the somewhat distorted current spelling in German.)
Brunswick rose to become one of the largest German cities during much of the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact, Brunswick was not just one town, but a confederation of five boroughs, each of them with their own town halls, town councils and mayors.
A stalwart of the Hanseatic League, Brunswick enjoyed the status of an independent city although it never officially gained the status of Imperial Free City. Its rightful overlords, the Dukes of Brunswick, had to reside outside of Brunswick, in Wolfenbüttel, until 1671 when the Dukes of all branches of the Guelph house joined forces, besieged the proud city and finally conquered it, making it the capital of the Duchy (until 1918), later the Free State of Brunswick (until 1946).
The parchment, including a magnificent illustration of the shield (Argent, a lion rampant Gules) is still preserved in the municipal archives, and it is doubly remarkable in that it not only shows the arms, but also the municipal flag, of identical design, adorned with a Schwenkel. (By the way, no mention was made as to how the lion was to be armed; today he is usually armed sable, because in the original painting his claws are drawn in blackish ink.
The lion’s tail has always been depicted in a very bold manner which seems to have been regarded as a special treat even in the old days, because the tail, which normally would not have merited special mention as there are no lions without tails, is expressly described in the grant as an “ufgeworfen tzagel”, which means “proudly erected tail”.
However, Albert’s grant did not invent a new coat of arms for Brunswick, but rather confirmed the already existing arms which had been in use “for long times, longer than the memory of men can remember”. This, in the language of the day, meant that even the oldest inhabitants had always been familiar with the traditional arms, in other words that in 1438 they were at least 80 years old.
This indeed fits nicely with other sources. In fact, the earliest painted representation of the red lion arms can be found in one of the versions of the “Sachsenspiegel”, a book of common law, dating from 1366.
As with most ancient arms, the chronicles do not tell us why a specific heraldic device was chosen. Everybody knew, so there was no need to mention it, leaving us having to guess. The most natural explanation would be that the lion denotes links with Duke Henry the Lion (born 1129, died 1195), Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, the mightiest of all German princes next to the Emperor, who (albeit mistakenly) was regarded as the town’s founder (indeed he founded many cities, including Munich and Lübeck).
It is not known for sure whether Henry already bore a coat of arms. If he did, it would most probably have been a lion, Or on Sable or Argent on Gules. In later years, when he had forfeited his lands and was forced to live in exile in England with his father-in-law King Henry II, he used non-armorial seals depicting a lion of naturalistic design echoing his clan name (Guelph meaning lion cub) as well as his personal name Henricus Leo. He left Brunswick a famous bronze lion statue facing his castle that is still here today. But this lion is also non-heraldic. The arms of Brunswick, in any case, were not modelled after Henry’s bronze lion, but displays a traditional lion rampant.
The colours are interesting. They are red and white and thus keep in
line with the Hanseatic colours of red and white. Although the
In the 16th and 17th centuries, Brunswick, without further royal authorisation, chose to display its arms as a full achievement, with a helmet, red and white mantling, and a crest depicting the red lion on a white roundel bordered compony Argent and Gules and adorned with peacock’s feathers all around.
As mentioned before, Brunswick was a complex organism. Each of the five boroughs had its own arms. The Old Town (Altstadt) which ranked first used the lion arms unaltered, while the New Town (Neustadt) charged the lion with a silver anchor (because the city’s port was located here). Hagen charged the lion with a silver spiked wheel in honour of St Catherine, the borough’s patron saint, Altewiek used Argent a lion’s head affronté Gules, and Sack, the smallest borough, displayed an image of the “Burglöwe”, the lion statue mentioned before on its pedestal, Gules on Argent. Although the Dukes abolished the borough organisation in 1671, the borough names are still alive, and their arms can be seen in several places, including the town hall.
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