The coat of arms of Hungary () was adopted on 11 July 1990, after the end of communist rule. The arms have been used before, both with and without the Holy Crown of Hungary, sometimes as part of a larger, more complex coat of arms, and its elements date back to the Middle Ages.
The shield is split into two parts:
- The dexter (the right side from the bearer's perspective, the left side from the viewer's) features the so-called Árpád stripes, four Gules (red) and four Argent (silver) stripes. Traditionally, the silver stripes represent four rivers: Duna (Danube), Tisza, Dráva, and Száva.
- The sinister (the left side from the bearer's perspective, the right side from the viewer's) consists of an Argent (silver) double cross on Gules (red) base, situated inside a small Or (golden) crown, the crown is placed on the middle heap of three Vert (green) hills, representing the mountain ranges (trimount) Tátra, Mátra, and Fátra.
Atop the shield rests the Holy Crown of Hungary, the crown of King Saint Stephen of Hungary. The crown is kept in the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest today.
History
Grand Principality of Hungary (895–1000)
According to medieval Hungarian chronicles, King Attila had the Turul bird on his shield and it was the military badge of the Hungarians until the time of Prince Géza. Under the rule of his son, King Saint Stephen, the Christian Kingdom of Hungary was established in 1000.
The griffin, wolf, and deer, these common motifs of the 9th and early 10th centuries, rarely appear in later Hungarian iconography and heraldic symbolism. However the hawk or Turul, a symbol in shamanistic lore that rested upon the tree of life, connecting the earth, the netherworld, and the skies, endured for a longer period as an emblem of the Hungarian ruling house. The ruling Árpád dynasty is also referred to as the Turul dynasty.
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File:HetVezer-ChroniconPictum.jpg|The seven chieftains of the Hungarians, Árpád, Grand Prince of the Hungarians is in the middle with a Turul shield. (Chronicon Pictum)
File:Istvan-ChroniconPictum.jpg|King Saint Stephen – Hungarian flag and shield with the double cross (Chronicon Pictum, 1358)
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Kingdom of Hungary (1000–1946)
The double cross, a symbol of royal power, appeared during the reign of King Béla III of Hungary (1172–1196). Daughter of King Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, Saint Irene was a Byzantine empress, she was the mother of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. The second son of King Géza II of Hungary, Béla arrived in Constantinople in 1163. Béla was raised in the imperial court of Manuel due to the close Byzantine–Hungarian relations of the mid-12th century, and he was even the heir to the throne. He had ambitions to create a Hungarian–Byzantine personal union.
File:COA Anjou Louis I.jpg|Coat of arms of King Louis I the Great (1364). Wall relief on the courtyard of Bojnice Castle.
File:Luxemburgi Zsigmond király (1387-1437) első kettős felségpecsétjének hátlapja (1384-1405).jpg|Reverse of the first double seal (1387–1405) of King Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387–1437)
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The double cross symbol found its way to Western Europe through Hungary, because René the Good, who was related to the House Anjou of Hungary, laid claim to four kingdoms, including Hungary. He placed the symbol on his flags before the Battle of Nancy, Lorraine in 1477. He won the battle and regained his lost Duchy of Lorraine. Thus the symbol became known in Western Europe as the Cross of Lorraine.
thumb|[[Programme (booklet)|Programmes of the National Theatre reflecting the political changes of the revolution of 1848 in their depiction of the national coat of arms. Note that in modern usage the Holy Crown of Hungary on the coat of arms is not understood as a symbol of monarchy but as a symbol of the millennial tradition of Hungarian statehood.]]
thumb|Arms of Hungary on the 1890 [[Austro-Hungarian florin coin; the right version adds the arms of Fiume]]
thumb|upright|Royal herald wearing [[tabard with the arms of Hungary in the 1899 book Heraldischer Atlas]]
thumb|upright|Coat of Arms at [[Liberty Bridge (Budapest)|Liberty Bridge in Budapest]]
List of Hungarian coat of arms
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The double cross, a symbol of royal power, appeared during the reign of King Béla III of Hungary (1172–1196).
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On the Golden Bull of 1222, issued by Andrew II (), the stripes contain seven lions. The lion is a widespread symbol of royal power.
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|Coat of arms of King Ladislaus IV of Hungary (1272–1290)
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|Andrew III () used a red triangle-shaped shield with a curved side and a silver and black frame as his coat of arms. In the middle it contained the usual double-cross in silver color, but with a green wreath around the lower part and a pointed bottom. At the top on the left side it features a silver crescent, while on the left side, a silver six-pointed star.
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|The seal of Wenceslaus III () shows the simple double cross with green trimount. After the extinction of the male branch of the Árpád dynasty in 1301, the claimants to the throne from the female branch of the dynasty used the double cross to signify their claim to the Hungarian royal title. and Bosnia, but the so-called "small coat of arms" always remained the central piece. (The more complex ones were called "medium" and "large coat of arms".) The adjacent image shows the medium coat of arms, in official use (with some modifications) from the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 till the end of World War I (1918). The outer pieces (anti-clockwise from top left) are the coats of arms of Dalmatia, Slavonia, Bosnia (added in 1915), Fiume, Transylvania, and Croatia.
When Hungary became part of the Habsburg monarchy, the coat of arms became a part of that of the Monarchy, but later it became of marginal importance and during the reign of Joseph II – who did not even have himself crowned with the Holy Crown – it was omitted from the coins.
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|Used from 1915 to 1918. After the revolution was repressed, the Hungarian coat of arms was not used again until the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, when the small coat of arms with the crown once more became a part of a more complex coat of arms, similar to the medium coat of arms shown above. The Hungarian arms also became part of the combined coat of arms of Austria-Hungary.
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Changes during the 20th century
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After World War I, during the time of the First Hungarian Republic a new coat of arms was introduced. The new arms was almost the same as the "small coat of arms" only with the monarchist elements removed to make it look more republican.
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The Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919 totally abolished the traditional coat of arms and used the communist five-pointed red star on official documents. After the fall of the communists, the Kossuth coat of arms was used for a short while.
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After the restoration of the kingdom, the small coat of arms (with the Holy Crown and the two angels) became official until the First Vienna Award in 1938, when the government started to use the 1915 coat of arms officially again.
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During the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany in 1944–1945 at the end of World War II, the puppet government formed by the fascist Arrow Cross Party added the letter "H" (for Hungaria) and the Arrow Cross symbol to it.
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Following the military forces of Nazi Germany in Hungary being defeated by the Red Army, Soviet military occupation ensued, eventually leading to the creation of a communist government in Hungary. Between 1946 and 1949 the Kossuth-style coat of arms was used, then the Hungarian People's Republic introduced a new state coat of arms in line with socialist heraldry, with a layout closely resembling that of the Soviet Union's.
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During the 1956 revolution, the "Kossuth" Coat of Arms was used again. In old newsreels, the Kossuth badge can be seen painted onto the turrets of many revolutionary tanks fighting against the Soviet invasion in the streets of Budapest. Although this revolution was crushed quickly by the Soviet Army, the new Communist government did not reinstate the 1949–1956 coat of arms, and thus this coat of arms was used for about a year.
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A new coat of arms was created in late 1957, incorporating a more traditional heraldic escutcheon (bearing the Hungarian red-white-green tricolor) into the wreath-and-red-star framework of socialist heraldry. Its usage ended with the adoption of the current coat of arms in 1990.
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Since 1990 the historical crowned small coat of arms has served as the official symbol of Hungary. In the first democratically elected Parliament there was considerable debate about the depiction of the Holy Crown on the coat of arms. The liberal, opposition party (Alliance of Free Democrats, SZDSZ) proposed the Kossuth-style "Republican" version but the conservative government backed the historical, crowned one.
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Honours
- In May and June 1946 a set of eight stamps of Coat of arms of Hungary was issued. These are the issues of inflation.
- Further, a fourteen-stamp set of Arms and Post-horn were issued May and June 1946; these are also the issues of inflation.
- Four commemorative stamps were issued on 15 March 1948 as part of the series: Centenary of the beginning of Hungary's war for Independence.
- On 20 August 1949 three stamps of Arms of Hungary were issued on the occasion of the Adoption of the Hungarian Peoples' Republic's Constitution.
- On 23 May 1958 three stamps were issued to commemorate the first anniversary of the law amending the constitution.
- Between 1941 and 45 as many as 44 Postage-Due stamps of various denominations, watermarks and paper were issued.
Some other stamps were also issued.
See also
- Coat of arms of Slovakia
- Coat of arms of Budapest
- Flag of Hungary
- Hungarian heraldry
- Patriarchal cross
- Cross of Lorraine
Sources
References
- Bálint Hóman: A magyar címer történetéhez ("Additions to the history of the coat of arms of Hungary"), 1920 [http://mek.oszk.hu/07100/07139/html/0010/0019-392.html] (Hungarian)
- Iván Bertényi: Államcímerünk kialakulása ("Emergence of the state coat of arms"), 2003 [https://web.archive.org/web/20070312065143/http://www.historia.hu/archivum/2003/0302bertenyi.htm] (Hungarian)
13. colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/6955-Hungary/year/1958/page/4. Mi:HU 1529A-32A, Sn:HU 1191–93, Yt:HU 1245–47.
14. colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/6955-Hungary/year/1941/page/4,5. colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/6955-Hungary/year/1942/page/4. colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/6955-Hungary/year/1944/page/2,3.
colnect.com/en/stamps/list/country/6955-Hungary/year/1945/page/10,11,12.
External links
- The Hungarian Coat of Arms
- History of the Coat of Arms of Hungary from Szeged University (in Hungarian, with pictures)
- 2011 CCII law (on the use of Hungary's coat of arms and flag, as well as awards) from njt.hu