A blue band on a white ground: the seal of the community of Zug dates from 1319 and the design resembles the Habsburg arms with the colours changed.
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.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a square field, of a 1:1 ratio, white, with a horizontal blue band in the centre. A band is a stripe of colour.
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.
Zug changed sides, not flags: founded by Austria, it fought against the confederates at Morgarten…
VNIVERSITATIS DE ZVGE, is of 1319
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Zug is a horizontal blue band in the centre of a white field. Nothing else: with no animals or towers, it is among the barest of the cantonal flags, and its simplicity covers a dynastic origin.
Zug was a town founded by the dukes of Austria, and its arms come from noble hands, not from communal fantasy. The most accepted explanation: they were granted by Rudolf of Habsburg by inverting his own, which were a white band on red; in Zug it became a blue band on white, with the blue perhaps taken from the counts of Lenzburg, the first lords of the place. The first written record of the community’s seal, S. VNIVERSITATIS DE ZVGE, is of 1319; since then the design has not moved.
Zug changed sides, not flags: founded by Austria, it fought against the confederates at Morgarten (1315) and ended up joining them when it was surrounded, with its admission officially dated to 1352.
Blue band
in heraldry the horizontal stripe is sometimes read as a military belt or a ribbon of honour.
White and blue
a mixture of the Habsburg and Lenzburg arms, according to the most sustained explanation; no document confirms it entirely.
Zug, a town of the dukes of Austria, fought against the confederates at the battle of Morgarten; when the Duke abandoned them and it was surrounded, it opened its gates and joined the winning side.
Zug’s admission to the Confederation was formalised in the Peace of Thorberg in 1368, but in 1414 the paperwork was redone and backdated to 1352, giving it more antiquity than it had.
In the Toggenburg War of 1712 the Protestant cantons captured Zug’s standard; its image survives in old photographs and in sharpshooters’ chronicles.
Test what you have read about the flag of Zug.
Flag image: Autor desconocido, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
