page_title: German heraldry
section_title: Eagles and lions
hierarchical_section_title: German heraldry / Heraldic elements / Charges / Eagles and lions
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Codex Manesse, UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 323r: Herr Reinmar von Zweter
context_page_description: German heraldry is the tradition and style of heraldic achievements in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, including national and civic arms, noble and burgher arms, ecclesiastical heraldry, heraldic displays and heraldic descriptions. German heraldic style is one of the four major broad traditions within European heraldry and stands in contrast to Gallo-British, Latin and Eastern heraldry, and strongly influenced the styles and customs of heraldry in the Nordic countries, which developed comparatively late. Together, German and Nordic heraldry are often referred to as German-Nordic heraldry.
  The German heraldic tradition is noted for its scant use of heraldic furs, multiple crests, inseparability of the crest, and repetition of charges in the shield and the crest. Mullets have six points, and beasts may be colored with patterns.
  As in other European heraldic traditions, the most prominent among the birds and beasts are the eagle and lion. These two charges in particular had a special significance in Germany, where the eagle became symbolic of the Holy Roman Empire, and the lion came to represent certain feudal lords.
context_section_description: The two most commonly occurring animals in heraldry, the lion and the eagle, bore special political significance in medieval Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Neubecker asserts that this "heraldic antagonism... makes the eagle the symbol of imperial power and the lion the symbol of royal sovereignty." According to Neubecker:
  In the heroic poem by Heinrich von Veldeke based on the story of Aeneas, the bearer of the arms of a lion is set against the bearer of the arms of an eagle. If one takes the latter to be the historical and geographical forerunner of the Holy Roman emperor, then the bearer of the lion represents the unruly feudal lords, to whom the emperor had to make more and more concessions, particularly to the powerful Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, Henry the Lion (1129–1195) of the house of Guelph. Duke Henry did not bear arms in the technical sense, but he used a naturalistic picture of a lion as a seal and erected a monumental and lifelike bronze lion outside his castle of Dankwarderode in Brunswick. It was left to his descendants to adopt a formal coat of arms, with two lions passant, which was derived from the arms of England, which had three such lions. Henry referred to himself in Latin as Henricus Leo... in German, Heinrich der Löwe and Heinrich Welf (Guelph).
  According to Neubecker, the German imperial eagle goes back to the ancient Romans, and the newly crowned emperor Charlemagne erected an imperial eagle – a symbol that would carry over all the way to modern Germany – at his palace at Aachen. From the 13th century, Neubecker continues, the view was generally held that the eagle of the emperor should have two heads, while that of the future emperor should have one, a policy that was codified by the emperor Sigismund in 1401. The imperial double eagle was again resurrected by the emperor Francis II and became the symbol of the Austrian Empire.
  In medieval Germany, the eagle also represented the house of Hohenzollern. Even while the double eagle became the symbol of the Holy Roman Empire and the emperor, the single-headed eagle became the symbol of the German king. The emperor even granted certain princes and free cities in the empire the right to use the imperial eagle as supporter. Notably, the minnesinger Reinmar von Zweter formed the Klee-Stengeln ("Clover-Stems", the heraldic Eagle's stylized wing-bones) of his heraldic eagle into a second and third head.
caption: Three-headed eagle arms of Reinmar von Zweter, from the Codex Manesse
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