Flag of Bohemia
The Flag of Bohemia is a historic flag, which now forms part of the design in the modern flag of the Czech Republic. The flag, a horizontal bicolour, was based on the colours of the former monarchs of Bohemia.
The heraldic flag of Bohemia (the flag of Bohemia in the form of the flag with coat of arms) is described and drawn for example in the work of Jacob Koebel: Wapen des heyligen römischen Reichs teutscher Nation from 1545. The even older description of this flag (13th century) can be read in the chronicle of Ottokar aus der Gaal (Otacher ouz der Geul, Ottokar von Steiermark) (* about 1265; † between 1318 and 1322): Die Steirische Reimchronik.
Hern Dietrich Spatzmanen
sach man die banier leiten:
in einem rȏten samît breiten
was gewohrt ein lewe wîz.
ouch heten ir baniere flîz,
die von Merhaeren wârn:
ein geschâchzabelten arn
von rȏter und von wîzer varbe
sach man ob in begarbe
waejen von dem winde.
"The colors of the flag, white and red, were derived from the coat of arms of the King of Bohemia (silver lion on a red field) which was granted to the king Vladislaus I in the 12th century. This quickly became the coat of arm of the whole kingdom."
The oldest surviving full colour depiction of the arms of Bohemia is represented by the fresco in the hall of the castle of Gozzoburg in Krems an der Donau, that comes from the beginning of 70th of 13. century. Further depiction can be found in the manuscript of abbes Kunigunde from the 1310s.
The bicolor white-red banners where threfore carried to battles by the armies of the Bohemian kings and in the 19th century the colors were adopted by the Czech national movement. But when the goals of the movement were fulfilled in 1918 by the restoration of the independent Czech state the need for the significant symbols, including the flag which is not identical to this of the neighbouring Poland, led to the approval of the new flag of Czechoslovakia in 1920. This new flag however included the white and red horizontal stripes from the flag of Bohemia.
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