In July 2012, the following eagle emblem from a discovery in the Greifswald area was published on the kulturwerte-mv.de website (MV refers to Mecklemburg-Vorpommern which is where Greifswald is).
Now, the authors of the post suggest similarities with southern German eagles.
Maybe. There certainly are examples of the imperial eagle… but they come rather later. Barbarossa, on the early side, may have had one and manuscripts of the 14th century (see the Codex Balduini Trevirensis from 1340, the Codex Manesse from no earlier than 1304 or the Zürich armorial, also about 1340) show some of those.
Before Albert the Bear bequeathed to it the bear seal, the city seal of Berlin featured an eagle (the later “markish” eagle of Brandenburg) attested from the 13th and 14th century (some claim dates from 1253 and 1280) and that eagle, unlike the above, had its head high. These come from Hermann Brosien’s Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg im Mittelalter (1887):
The seal may have been chosen about 1170 by Otto I, Albert’s son though this is not entirely clear. Whether the fact that the area was surrounded by Suavic tribes had contributes to the selection of the eagle is unclear. Ultimately, the city went with the bear (in 1338 both were on the seal with the eagle seal being pulled by a bear (?) much like a kite).
There may have been other non-imperial eagles from local German lords but am not aware of anything similar to the above eagle on the Greifswald seal.
What the authors of the kulturwerte-mv.de piece do not discuss, however, is just how similar the above Greifswald eagle is – especially with his raised head and beak – to those also eagle known from Polish heraldry including especially the many Silesian but too Greater Polish and Masovian eagles.
The following pictures and information are from various articles including:
- by Paweł Pionczewski and Beata Miazga under the title (don’t ask me to translate this): Zawieszka z orłem z Ziębic na Śląsku. Przyczynek do poznania średniowiecznego rzędu końskiego, in Acta Militaria Medievalia, Kraków – Rzeszów – Sanok 2013.
- by Jerzy Piekalski and Krzysztof Wachowski: ‘Rodzime i obce‘ w krajobrazie kulturowym średniowiecznych ziem polskich.
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by Radosław Zdaniewicz: Dwie oktagonalne głowice mieczy z terenu Górnego Śląska.
In general, the German eagles do not have their head turned slightly upward (the early Berlin seals being the exception), sometimes have a right facing (from the perspective of the viewer) head or have two heads. The Polish and Silesian eagles generally look left and have one head raised slightly upwards. The eagles of the later Teutonic Order also look left but the head is not elevated but level like the German eagle’s.
And then there are these Polish coats of arms that come from the Gelre Armorial (Wapenboek Gelre) which was compiled in the late 14th century (the ones on the left leaf; the others are mostly Polish clan/family coats of arms but show no eagles).
(BTW note the husaria type (eagle?) wings on two of the helmets in the coats of arms; of course, the much later real husaria wings were not attached to helmets; similar designs were present in non-Polish contexts such as on the markish eagle coat of arms of Brandenburg and, for example, on a case that may have belonged to the commander of the Teutonic Order at Chojnice (though there the eagle looks rightwards).
Of course, famously, the first Polish capital’s name is derived from “nest” (Gniezno). This is attested in the late 13th century Greater Poland Chronicle. However, the legend of Lech actually seeing an eagle at the future town site is of later provenance.
The eagle was also present on the coats of arms of other Suavic and non-Suavic nations. Thus, we see it Czechia, Moravia, Krajina (Carniola) and northern Italy and Tyrol.
In the end, all that can be said is that the single-headed eagle looking slightly upwards to the left (from the onlooker’s perspective) featured prominently in all West Suavic lands including those westernmost lands that became the Holy Roman Empire’s border marches. (Note that the white Frankfurt eagle on a red background, though it may have originated in the 14th century, was first depicted only in the late 16th century).
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