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Ceska Republika
Symbolism and history of the flag
From: http://users.aol.com/mpgregor/private/flags.htm this information by Hugh Agnew.
Background of the state flag and coat of arms:
The official coat of arms of the Czech Republic is based on the arms of the lands of the Czech crown in the middle ages. The emblem of Bohemia proper (once it had replaced the Premyslid "flaming eagle" still used in depiction of St. Vaclav) is a white lion with two tails, rampant on a red field. The two eagles represent Moravia and Silesia. The red-and-white chequerboard eagle on a blue field is Moravia, which was referred to by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa as an independent Margraviate in the twelfth century, though it was soon tied firmly to the lands of the Czech crown by the tradition of making the Czech king or his heir margrave. The black eagle on the gold field represents Silesia. Only fragments of the historical territory of Silesia remain in the Czech Republic today, around Opava and Tesin, but all of it came under the Czech crown during the reign of John of Luxemburg and his son Charles IV.
Many European national flags derive from former royal coats of arms, and the Czech one is no exception. Since a complicated coat of arms could not be seen from a distance during a conflict, the coat was reduced to a standard displayed on a lance point, usually (following the customary descriptions of coats of arms) as bars of horizontal colors. So, the Czech kings flew a standard of a bar of white "on" a bar of red, representing the white lion on the red field.
During discussions after World War I over what flag to adopt for the new Czechoslovak State, in the end an adaptation of the Bohemian flag was created, with the addition of a blue triangle next to the staff. This made the flag different from the flag of Bohemia alone (recognizing the fact that not only Silesians and Moravians, but also Slovaks were now supposedly part of the "state bearing" nation). The choice of blue meant that the colors of the flag were now red-white-blue, which in the nineteenth century were considered "traditional Slavic" colors and had been adopted by most pan-Slavic oriented movements (including the Czech Sokol movement) during that time.
Actually as far as I know there is no convincing evidence of their being particularly "traditionally Slavic" before the Russians under Peter the Great began using a red-white-blue banner, which probably came from the flag of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, whose shipbuilding and naval prowess Peter greatly admired. Still, the idea was firmly fixed by the nineteenth century, so the flags of Russia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and ex-Yugoslavia all made use of these colors for that reason.
When the CSFR broke up in 1993, the Czech Republic by decision of the Czech National Council, now the Czech Parliament, adopted a flag practically undistinguishable from the flag of the Czechoslovak state, while the Slovaks adopted their "traditional" flag, which is horizontal stripes of red-white-blue with the shield (appearing also in the Hungarian emblem, but not in the red-white-blue colors) superimposed on it. The CSFR federal assembly had agreed that neither "successor state" would use any symbols of the federation, but the CNR ignored this resolution, which caused some further resentment among the Slovaks added to all their other resentments, justified and unjustified...
The first Czechoslovakian flag (1918-1920) was identical to the Polish one as these are the colors of Bohemia. I saw once a children school book, in Czech, dating from the thirties, showing such a flag with the comment: 'There are our colors» and besides the Czechoslovak flag with: 'here is the flag of the republic'. During WWII the protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia had the following flag: three horizontal stripes white-red-blue
Jean-Francés Blanc 31-Oct-1996
Before the separation of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, a resolution was passed by the Czechoslovak government that neither of the two "new" states could continue to use the red white and blue flag of Czechoslovakia. Upon separation, Slovakia adopted the White/Blue/Red flag with the shield of arms in the upper hoist. The "new" Czech Republic adopted the flag of former Czechoslovakia, in direct violation of the resolution mentioned above. Slovakia was ticked off over this, but the Czech folks said "The country that made that rule doesn't exist any more" and refused to change.
Nick Artimovich 31-Oct-1996
The blue of the triangle stand for Moravia, since the Moravian coat of arms is blue with an eagle, chequy of white and red.
Josh Fruhlinger and Harald Müller 31-Oct-1996
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