The flag of Bohemia is a historic flag, which now forms part of the design in the modern

flag of the Czech Republic The flag of the Czech Republic () is the same as the flag of the former Czechoslovakia. Upon the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in December 1992, the Czech Republic kept the Czechoslovak flag while Slovakia adopted Flag of Slovakia, its own flag ...

. The flag, a horizontal bicolour, was based on the colours of the former monarchs of Bohemia. The

heraldic flag In heraldry and vexillology, a heraldic flag is a flag containing coat of arms, coats of arms, heraldic badges, or other devices used for personal identification. Heraldic flags include banners, standards, pennons and their variants, gonfalons, ...

of Bohemia (the flag of Bohemia in the form of the flag with coat of arms) is described and drawn for example in the work of Jacob Koebel: ''Wapen des heyligen römischen Reichs teutscher Nation'' from 1545. The even older description of this flag (13th century) can be read in the chronicle of Ottokar aus der Gaal (Otacher ouz der Geul, Ottokar von Steiermark) (* about 1265; † between 1318 and 1322): ''Die Steirische Reimchronik''.

History and use

"The colors of the flag, white and red, were derived from the coat of arms of the King of Bohemia (silver lion on a red field) which was granted to the king Vladislaus I in the 12th century. This quickly became the coat of arm of the whole kingdom." The oldest surviving full colour depiction of the arms of Bohemia is represented by the fresco in the hall of the castle of Gozzoburg in Krems an der Donau, that comes from the early 1270s. A further depiction can be found in the manuscript of abbes Kunigunde from the 1310s. The bicolor white-red banners were therefore carried into battle by the armies of the Bohemian kings and in the 19th century the colors were adopted by the Czech national movement. But when the goals of the movement were fulfilled in 1918 by the restoration of the independent Czech state, the need for the significant symbols, including a flag which was not identical to that of neighbouring Poland, led to the approval of the new flag of Czechoslovakia in 1920. This new flag still included the white and red horizontal stripes from the flag of Bohemia. In 1990, the

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

n flag was adopted as the official flag of the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, then part of the

Czech and Slovak Federative Republic After the Velvet Revolution in Revolutions of 1989, late-1989, Czechoslovakia adopted the official short-lived country name Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (, ; ''ČSFR'') during the period from 23 April 1990 until 31 December 1992, after w ...

(ČSFR, 1990–1992). The flag was adopted in reaction to the adoption of separate Slovak symbols. However, the Czech flag was used much less than the wider flag of Czechoslovakia, whereas the

flag of Slovakia The current form of the national flag of the Slovak Republic () was adopted by Slovakia's Constitution, which came into force on 3 September 1992. The flag, like many other flags of Slavic nations, uses Pan-Slavic colours ( red, white, and blu ...

(then without coat of arms and thus identical to flag of the World War II Slovak RepublicConstitutional act on the name, coat of arms, flag, seal and anthem of the Slovak Republic 50/1990 Coll.) was widely used in Slovakia. This difference mirrored prevailing separatist tendencies in the Slovak Republic and federalist tendencies in the Czech Republic. Another problem, again, was the Bohemian flag's similarity to the flag of neighbouring Poland, because the only difference was the proportion 2:3 (Polish flag is 5:8). For these reasons, Czech politicians decided to preserve the flag of Czechoslovakia as the symbol of the state with which most of Czech society was identified. Since 1993, the flag of Bohemia has had no legal status and is only rarely seen today in the Czech Republic.

Notes

External links

Entry on Bohemia from Flags of the World
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bohemia 12th-century introductions Flags of the Czech Republic Obsolete national flags Red and white flags Kingdom of Bohemia

History and use

See also

Notes

External links