History
The idea behind the design of the coat of arms of Romania dates since 1859, when the two Romanian countries, Wallachia and Moldavia, united under Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza. Then the two heraldic symbols, the golden aquila and the aurochs, were officially juxtaposed.
Until 1866 there were many variants of the coat of arms, regarding the background color and the number of times the two main elements where represented. In 1866, after Carol I was elected Prince of Romania, the shield was divided into quarters: in the first and fourth an eagle was depicted, and in the second and third the aurochs; above the shield the coat of arms of the reigning Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen Family was placed. After the 1872, the coat of arms included the symbol of southern Bessarabia (after 1877, of Dobruja), two dolphins in the fourth quarter, and the one of Oltenia, a golden lion, in the third quarter; on the shield the Steel Crown was placed, as a symbol of sovereignty and independence, after the Romanian War of Independence.
The coat of arms remained unchanged until 1922, after World War I, when Transylvania was united with the Kingdom of Romania. Then the coat of arms of Transylvania was placed in the fourth quarter, with the Turul replaced by a black aquila, the third quarter depicted the joined coats of arms of Banat and Oltenia (the bridge of Apollodorus of Damascus and a golden lion respectively), and the coat of arms of Dobruja was placed in an insertion. The shield was placed on the chest of a golden crossed and crowned aquila, as a symbol of the Latinity of the Romanians. The aquila was placed on a blue shield, capped with the Steel Crown. The coat of arms had three versions: lesser, middle (with supporters and motto), and greater (the middle arms on a mantle red lined with ermine).
After 1948, the Communist authorities changed both the flag and the coat of arms. The coat of arms was rather an emblem, faithful to the Communist pattern: a landscape (depicting a rising sun, a tractor and an oil drill) surrounded by stocks of wheat tied together with a cloth in the colors of the national flag. Until 1989 there were four variants, the first being changed shortly after 1948 (the proclamation of the republic), again changed in 1956 (a red star was added), and finally in 1966, when Romania ceased to be a People's Republic, and became a Socialist Republic.
Immediately after the 1989 Revolution, the idea came up of giving Romania a new, representative coat of arms. In fact, the very symbol of the Revolution was the flag with a hole in its middle where the communist coat of arms had been cut out.
The heraldic commission set up to design a new coat of arms for Romania worked intensely, subjecting to the Parliament two final designs which were then combined. What emerged is the current design adopted by the two chambers of the Romanian Parliament in their joint session on September 10, 1992.
Read more about this topic: Coat Of Arms Of Romania
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)