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Bad Köstritz City (Germany)

Stadt Bad Köstritz, Landkreis Greiz, Thüringen

Last modified: 2021-05-21 by klaus-michael schneider
Keywords: bad koestritz | lion(reguardant) | hands(faithful) |
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[Bad Köstritz city banner] image by Jörg Majewski, See also:

Bad Köstritz

Bad Köstritz Banner

It is a black-white-blue vertical tricolour with centred arms.
Sources: city webpage and German WIKIPEDIA
Klaus-Michael Schneider,

Bad Köstritz plain Banner

[Bad Köstritz plain city banner] image by Klaus-Michael Schneiderand Tomislav Todorović, 4 Oct 2016

It was a black-white-blue vertical tricolour.
Sources: Stefan Schwoon's database and German WIKIPEDIA
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 4 Oct 2016

Bad Köstritz Coat of Arms

Shield Or, a sinister facing double queued lion rampant reguardant Argent, headed Sable, armed and tongued Gules, holding a sword Argent hilted Sable in pale by his right forepaw and an inescutcheon Azure charged with a pair of shaking hands Argent by his left forepaw.
Meaning:
Köstritz had been a fiefdom of the Margraves of Meißen since the 13th century. It became a possession of the Counts of Reuß in 1364. In 1690 it became the seat of a branch line of the counts. Since 1800 it was considered to be a market town, famous particularly for its breweries and distilleries. In 1864 a salt-water spa was established. The town was furthermore the seat of gardeners and producers of all kinds of beverages.
The arms are based on the version of 1930, which is however not completely known. In times of the GDR a similar coat of arms was in use. The shield was blue charged with a completely white lion in same posture also with sword and inescutcheon. The old version was restored in 1998 by the city council and modified in details in 2018. The lion is a the heraldic animal of the Counts of Reuß-Köstritz. The faithful hands, as the shaking hands are denoted in the local arms, were alluding to the incidents during the 1848 revolution. Others say they were symbolising the good relationships between rulers and citizens. Nowadays they are interpreted as part of a culture of welcome to tourists and foreigners. Lion reguardant and faithful hands had been already on local seals since 1927.
Sources: city webpage, German WIKIPEDIA and Bensing et alii 1984, p.234
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 15 May 2021


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