A black ram with horns, hooves and a golden crown leaps on a yellow ground: the canting arms of Schaffhausen since the twelfth century.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
CivilFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 2:3 ratio in yellow, with a black ram in the centre carrying a crown and a golden sex.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
The first image of the ram appears on coins from around 1180: a ram on a roof
The city was free within the Empire from 1218 and its oldest seal is documented in 1253
By 1250 the coins already showed the ram leaping from a tower
Crown, horns, hooves and golden sex: a privilege granted by Pope Julius II in 1512
The ram changed posture: until the twentieth century it appeared supported on one hoof…
The crown and the red tongue, on the other hand, do have a date: they were made compulsory with…
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Schaffhausen is a black ram leaping on a yellow ground, with horns, hooves and a golden crown and a red tongue. It is a canting emblem the city has used for eight hundred years.
The first image of the ram appears on coins from around 1180: a ram on a roof, joining the two syllables of the popular name, Schaf (sheep) and Haus (house). By 1250 the coins already showed the ram leaping from a tower, and since then it almost always appears alone on the coat of arms. The city was free within the Empire from 1218 and its oldest seal is documented in 1253, but the standard that survives is the one carried to the Battle of Sempach in 1386, where the people of Lucerne captured it.
There is no dated order that redesigned the flag. The ram changed posture: until the twentieth century it appeared supported on one hoof (heraldically rampant) and in the 1940s the present leap became general, with both hind hooves on the ground. The crown and the red tongue, on the other hand, do have a date: they were made compulsory with the description in the 1948 federal armorial.
Ram
a canting arms for the name of the city, although the etymology is disputed; specialists prefer an old word for reed or boat over the popular Schaf (sheep).
Gold and black
the colours of the imperial standard, the black eagle on a golden ground.
Crown, horns, hooves and golden sex
a privilege granted by Pope Julius II in 1512, an augmentation of arms that even the Protestant Reformation did not remove.
The standard captured at Sempach is kept in the Lucerne town hall; in 1867 Schaffhausen tried to buy it back and the sale was refused. What does exist is the copy Lucerne commissioned in 1490, when the original was already rotting.
That the ram bears a golden penis is no modern joke: it appears in official heraldic descriptions since the papal augmentation of 1512.
Schaffhausen only joined the Confederation in 1501, two months after Basel-Stadt; it had lived under Austrian rule between 1330 and 1415.
Test what you have read about the flag of Schaffhausen.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Autor desconocido, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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