German heraldry

German heraldry is the tradition and style of heraldic achievements in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, including national and civic arms, noble and burgher arms, ecclesiastical heraldry, heraldic displays and heraldic descriptions. German heraldic style is one of the four major broad traditions within European heraldry and stands in contrast to Gallo-British, Latin and Eastern heraldry, and strongly influenced the styles and customs of heraldry in the Nordic countries, which developed comparatively late. Together, German and Nordic heraldry are often referred to as German-Nordic heraldry.
The German heraldic tradition is noted for its scant use of heraldic furs, multiple crests, inseparability of the crest, and repetition of charges in the shield and the crest. Mullets have six points, and beasts may be colored with patterns,.
As in other European heraldic traditions, the most prominent among the birds and beasts are the eagle and lion. These two charges in particular had a special significance in Germany, where the eagle became symbolic of the Holy Roman Empire, and the lion came to represent certain feudal lords. As the political divide between these groups grew in the late Middle Ages, the heraldic eagle and lion came to represent two of the foremost political powers in Germany, the house of Hohenstaufen and the house of Welf, respectively.

Terminology

The heraldic tinctures are the same in Imperial heraldry as in other European countries. Black charges occur on red fields and vice versa more often than in other countries, as in the arms of Stadler, Roder and Homberg. Tinctures are described using the German words for each, and argent is usually called silber though weiß also occurs.
The furs are referred to as follows:
Ermine is Hermelin, Ermines is Gegenhermelin, Erminois is Goldhermelin, Pean is Gegengoldhermelin, Vair is Feh or Grauwerk, Countervair is Gegenfeh, and Vairy of and is Buntfeh ob und . In addition to these, and Krückenfeh, German heraldry includes Kürsch. Kürsch is typically shown as dags of fur overlapping like roof tiles, and even ermine and vair are sometimes shown in this fashion, called Schuppenfeh. While each of these variations and some others exist in German heraldry, it is worth noting that even ermine is uncommon, vair is seldom found, and the others are rarer still.
As in English heraldry, the names for the lines of division and variation are closely related with those of the corresponding ordinaries. The apparent exceptions to this rule, however, are that a shield divided per fess is simply termed geteilt and a shield divided per pale is termed gespalten. German heraldry does take a distinct approach to divisions of the field, however, in dividing by the scheme of "im -schnitt ," or, "by -section ," where X signifies the number of charges issuant above the cut, and Y signifies the number issuant below. Thus, Im Lindenblattschnitt schrägrechtsgeteilt, or, "by linden leaf section party per bend," yields a line that starts at the dexter chief corner, slanting down per bend, then makes the form of two conjoined linden leaves in pale, and then continues to the sinister base. This also works with many other charges, and may divide the shield per pale, per fess, or other ways.

Divisions
English	Party per fess	Party per pale	Party per bend sinister	Quarterly	Quarterly with an inescutcheon
Deutsch	geteilt	gespalten	schräglinks geteilt	geviert	geviert mit Herzschild

Ordinaries / Heroldsbilder
English	Chief	Pale	Fess	Bend	Bend sinister	Chevron
Deutsch	Schildhaupt	Pfahl	Balken	Schrägbalken	Schräglinksbalken	Sparren
Ordinaries / Heroldsbilder
English	Cross	Saltire	Pall	Pall reversed	Pile	Bordure
Deutsch	Kreuz	Andreaskreuz	Deichsel	Göpel	Keil	Bord

Variations
English	Barry	Paly	Bendy	Chevronny	Chequy	Lozengy	Gyronny
Deutsch	geteilt	gespalten	schräggeteilt	gesparrt	geschacht	gerautet	geständert

History

Although the eagle had already served as a symbol of imperial power in antiquity and was associated with the emperor Charlemagne after his coronation in the year 800, this cannot yet be considered heraldry in the proper sense, which only emerged in the 12th century. It was under the Hohenstaufen emporer Heinrich VI that the eagle first appeared as an imperial coat of arms, from which it developed into the enduring symbol of the empire in the centuries that followed.
The seal was used extensively in the late Middle Ages, and was instrumental in spreading heraldry to the various institutions. According to Volborth, "the custom of the warrior-caste of using their arms on seals made this kind of pictorial identification fashionable and led to the adoption of arms by anybody using a seal." Noble women began using armorial seals in the 12th century. Heraldry spread to the burgher class in the 13th century, and even some peasants used arms in the 14th century. German burgher arms may have played a key role in the development of Swedish heraldry, especially in Stockholm, which had a large German population in the late Middle Ages.

Heraldic elements

Charges

In heraldry, a charge is any object or figure placed on the shield, whether placed on the field, on an ordinary, or even on another charge. In German heraldry, as in other European heraldic traditions, the most commonly used charges include the cross, the eagle, and the lion. Unlike other traditions, however, German heraldry features charges, especially lions, colored with patterns such as barry, paly, chequy, etc. For instance, the coats of arms of Hesse and Thuringia each depict a lion barry argent and gules. The Manesse Codex displays Wenceslaus II of Bohemia's eagle chequy sable and gules, and shows a backgammon player bearing a lion chequy argent and sable. Lions and other charges colored with furs, such as ermine, and semés, but not barry or chequy, are found in French heraldry.
Due to the early practice of marshalling by dividing the marshalled arms through the middle of the charge, some charges took on the appearance of being themselves divided, such as the arms of Hochtaunuskreis. Even as marshalling per pale supplanted dimidiation, some marshalled arms retained some aspects of dimidiation, yielding a half eagle on one side and a whole lion on the other in some cases, such as the arms of Goslar. Similarly, when the crosier was incorporated into the arms of Biberach, the result was the dexter half of an imperial eagle and, in the sinister half of the shield, a crosier.

Eagles and lions

The two most commonly occurring animals in heraldry, the lion and the eagle, bore special political significance in medieval Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Neubecker asserts that this "heraldic antagonism... makes the eagle the symbol of imperial power and the lion the symbol of royal sovereignty." According to Neubecker:

In the heroic poem by Heinrich von Veldeke based on the story of Aeneas, the bearer of the arms of a lion is set against the bearer of the arms of an eagle. If one takes the latter to be the historical and geographical forerunner of the Holy Roman emperor, then the bearer of the lion represents the unruly feudal lords, to whom the emperor had to make more and more concessions, particularly to the powerful Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, Henry the Lion of the house of Guelph. Duke Henry did not bear arms in the technical sense, but he used a naturalistic picture of a lion as a seal and erected a monumental and lifelike bronze lion outside his castle of Dankwarderode in Brunswick. It was left to his descendants to adopt a formal coat of arms, with two lions passant, which was derived from the arms of England, which had three such lions. Henry referred to himself in Latin as Henricus Leo... in German, Heinrich der Löwe and Heinrich Welf.

According to Neubecker, the German imperial eagle goes back to the ancient Romans, and the newly crowned emperor Charlemagne erected an imperial eagle – a symbol that would carry over all the way to modern Germany – at his palace at Aachen. From the 13th century, Neubecker continues, the view was generally held that the eagle of the emperor should have two heads, while that of the future emperor should have one, a policy that was codified by the emperor Sigismund in 1401. The imperial double eagle was again resurrected by the emperor Francis II and became the symbol of the Austrian Empire.
In medieval Germany, the eagle also represented the house of Hohenzollern. Even while the double eagle became the symbol of the Holy Roman Empire and the emperor, the single-headed eagle became the symbol of the German king. The emperor even granted certain princes and free cities in the empire the right to use the imperial eagle as supporter. Notably, the minnesinger Reinmar von Zweter formed the Klee-Stengeln of his heraldic eagle into a second and third head.