THE HERALDRY AND SHORT EXPLANATION ABOUT GERMAN HERALDIC FIGURES.


Heraldry itself is the special science about heraldic figures under the solid foundation of the European History of the last eight centuries. Furthermore it lightens the dark of the peoples social classification of the past. Without knowing at least some details of the central-european history is would be hard to explain, what heraldic figures mean to us in the presence and what they might have meant to people of the past. Therefore it seems to be worthwhile to stress the historical background first, before an explanation of heraldic figures is going to be started.

In the middle of the 12. century the first crusades of the central European confederation to the Holy Land, to Falastine and Jerusalem were started, mostly under considerable subventions of the Roman Church. The reason was to establish a new kingdom of baptized Christians in the Near East which had been conquered centuries ago by Arabic people. Each of the four entirely independent crusades, which took place within the 12. and 13. century, consisted of several thousands men, mostly noblemen and knights: Almost all of them must have had the usual cuirass, consisting of escutcheon and helmet, and of course, the old-time-weapons like spears and swords. In order to distinguish the different companies which must have looked all alike because of their cuirasses, they needed special signs besides the usual banners. So heraldic figures appeared the first time in the human history. Later the States of the confederation as well as of France and Italy had their own heraldic figures. Then even all the noblemen, in those days knights and mostly owners of the nowadays still famous castles, which are scattered around all over Europe, got to get their own heraldic figures. So it happens that still today we find figures which belong to the same family since the 14. or 15. century. All the heraldic figures looked like a simplified image of a knight's cuirass: escutcheon, helmet, spear, and sometimes, the colors of the state or the county. Thus far the historic background.

Now lets us skip a couple of centuries and let us take into consideration the development of social life late in the 18. century. As mentioned already above, the classification of people into "rich" and "poor" became stressed more and more. During this period of time the merchants of the big commercial towns didn't agree any more with this kind of social classification. They themselves wanted to get similar heraldic figures like those traditional ones of the noblemen. So they invented their figures, full of imagination and always similar to the figures of their rivals, the nobles. Instead of the spears they frequently took feathers, and very seldom they adopted the little crown which is always to be seen in noblemen's figures. Thus this little sign continued to be the principal difference between commercial and noble heraldic figures.

Since 1866 the possession of commercial heraldic figures is legally admitted by a federal law. That is the reason why we find nowadays relatively young commercial heraldic figures and pretty old noble- and county figures.

Generally spoken, we find quite frequently special signs of personal as well as local value inside the figures, for instant the "Bremen Key" inside the heraldic figure of the city of Bremen, or the lion as an old relic of the city of Brunswick. As far as the noblemen's figures are concerned, we find not infrequently divided figures. In these cases the escutcheon is divided in two or four equal parts. That happened, when one family became extinct. The other related family wanted to maintain the old figure, full of tradition and combined both figures with each other.

After all these explanations let us , finally, consider the SCHILLING - heraldic figure. We have learnt already, that it must be, for being a commercial figure, only relatively old. The escutcheon (1) shows the three colored foundation, bearing the colors of the German insign during the second "Reich" of the 19. Century. In the middle we find "one schilling", the old coin of those days. Below the inscription "schilling" we read the year of birth of old Diedrich Schilling, the creator of the figure. On top of the escutcheon we find the helmet with "iron bars" in front of the face (2). On top of the helmet we see once again the coin "one schilling", probably as a substitute of the noble's crown. Left and right of the helmet (3) we look on to two wings as a remembrance to "the flying Dutchman", as D. Schilling must have been called frequently because of his fast voyages across the Atlantic. In the lower part to the left and right (4) we find oak-leaves as ornaments in order to complete the whole.