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County and Municipal Flags (Thuringia, Germany)

Landkreis- und Gemeindeflaggen

Last modified: 2003-11-28 by santiago dotor
Keywords: thuringia | thüringen | thueringen | county | landkreis | municipality | gemeinde |
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County Flags

Landkreisflaggen

Ulle 1999 and Ulle 2000 make up a very detailed article (in German) about the flags of the counties and the county-free cities in this state. It is available online [images available in two zipped PDF files: first and second]. This article is the main source of information for my flag images. The images of all arms are based on the excellent pictures at the Thuringia official website.

Stefan Schwoon, 17 February 2001

Thuringia is subdivided into 17 counties and 6 county-free cities. All counties except for one have adopted flags. A clickable map of Thuringia showing these subdivisions can be found at Ralf Hartemink's International Civic Arms website, made by me.

To draw the flags, I made use of the excellent pictures of the arms at the heraldic webpage of Thuringia. I changed the colouring to FOTW standard, resized them and maybe edited a pixel or two, but essentially they are still the same images. Moreover, Falko Schmidt reviewed the images, corrected some mistakes and gave additional hints.

The composition of the coats of arms of the Thuringian counties are exemplary for German counties in general. In most of them the symbols of the (historical) states that ruled over (parts of) the county are shown and combined with local symbols. With knowledge of these symbols just seeing the arms usually gives you quite a good idea where the county is located. The most common symbols in the Thuringian county arms are as follows (very briefly):

  • Saxony (various duchies): ten black and yellow stripes with a green rue-crown [a crancelin].
  • Archdiocese of Mainz: white wheel in red field.
  • Reuss: yellow lion crowned red in a black field.
  • Margravate of Meissen: black lion in a yellow field.
  • Landgrafschaft Thüringen [Landgraviate of Thuringia]: in a blue field, a red and white striped lion with a golden crown.
  • Grafschaft Henneberg: in a golden field, a black hen standing on a green hill (canting, because Henneberg translates to 'hen mountain')
  • County of Orlamünde: a black lion in a golden field covered with red hearts.
The maps on the Baden-Württemberg mainling list website might give you an idea where these territories were located (try the 1380, 1547 and 1789 maps, for instance).

At the Thüringen official website mentioned above you can also find more extensive descriptions of the arms and of the territorial history of the counties.

Stefan Schwoon, 12 March 2001

The present counties were created by the Thuringian municipal reform in 1994 which reduced their number from 35 to 17. The previous counties were created in 1952 when the states in the German Democratic Republic were abolished and replaced by districts (Bezirke). Until 1990, the counties did not have their own symbols. Between 1990 and 1994, some of the old counties might have adopted flags, but I don't know any of them.

Stefan Schwoon, 13 March 2001

Six out of the 16 counties with flags use the Thuringian colours white-red while one uses red-white.

Stefan Schwoon, 16 March 2001

The flags I sent are based on the articles Ulle 1999 and Ulle 2000. In the meantime, (...) Jens Pattke has noted some differences between Ulle's articles and a publication of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen (Central institute for political education in Thuringia) available online. He published them on the Flaggenkunde mailing list (message #55 of 27 May 2001):

ich habe (...) die Ausgabe "Wappen und Flaggen des Freistaats Thüringen und seiner Landkreise sowie kreisfreien Städte" von der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringens (LZT) in der zweiten Auflage (...) mit den beiden Thüringen-Artikeln von H. Ulle im Flaggenkurier verglichen. Folgende Ungereimtheiten bzw. Widersprüche habe ich gefunden:
  • Landkreis Gotha: weiß-rotes Banner (LZT) oder rot-weißes Banner (Flaggenkurier)?
  • Stadt Jena: blau-weiß-gelbes Banner (LZT) oder blau-gelb-weißes Banner (Flaggenkurier)?
  • Landkreis Nordhausen: gelb-rotes Banner (LZT) oder rot-gelbes Banner (Flaggenkurier)?
  • Saale-Holzland-Kreis: grün-weiß-rot (1:2:1) waagerecht gestreiftes Banner (LZT) oder grün-weiß-rot (1:2:1) senkrecht gestreiftes Banner (Flaggenkurier)?
  • Landkreis Sömmerda: die im Flaggenkurier als erster Entwurf bezeichnete Flagge wurde am 20.12.1999 genehmigt (nach LZT).
I believe he wanted to send enquiries to the counties affected by the differences but I don't know if he got any answers.

Stefan Schwoon, 21 February 2002

County-Free City Flags

Flaggen kreisfreier Städte

Ulle 1999 and Ulle 2000 make up a very detailed article (in German) about the flags of the counties and the county-free cities in this state. (...) This article is the main source of information for my flag images. The images of all arms are based on the excellent pictures at the Thuringia official website. There are six county-free cities (kreisfreie Städte) in Thuringia: Eisenach, Erfurt, Gera, Jena, Suhl and Weimar.

Stefan Schwoon, 17 February 2001