Hemer - Coat of Arms

Coat of Arms

The three golden wolf-hooks are derived from the arms of the Brabeck family, the owners of the manor Haus Hemer. The red and white fess on the left side is derived from the arms of the Counts of the Mark. The current coat of arms of the city was originally used by the Amt, but when the Amt was dissolved into the city in 1975 the city adopted it. It was chosen because it was heraldically and esthetically more satisfying, but also because the adoption of the coat of arms of the Amt symbolized the fact that the enlarged city continues the tradition of the Amt. The coat of arms was officially granted on March 16, 1976.

The former coat of arms of the city used the same heraldic elements, but in a different arrangement. The red and white motif was used in the form of a bordure round the whole shield, which was completely black with the three yellow wolf-hooks in the middle. This coat of arms was granted by the president of the province of Westphalia on January 14 (Amt) and January 15 (city) 1936.

In 1926 the municipality of Hemer was already planning the creation of a coat of arms. A draft using industrial symbols was made by Treude, but the director of the Prussian state archive in Münster, Professor Schmitz-Kallenberg, advised against it. Instead he suggested two designs using the heraldic elements of families of Brabeck and of the Counts of the Mark. Hemer created new drafts using heraldic elements from the arms of previous owners of Haus Hemer (the families Overlacker and Wachtendonck), but in 1928 the topic was discontinued. When it was restarted in the 1930s the original suggestion of Professor Johannes Bauermann of the Prussian state archive was followed, with final artwork by the herald Waldemar Mallek.

In 1939 the other municipalities of the Amt also received coats of arms. All six took the three wolf-hooks as their common symbol, showing their membership in the Amt. Becke, Deilinghofen and Frönsberg combined them with coats of arms of former noble families of the municipality, while Evingsen, Ihmert and Kesbern combined them with symbols representing their main industries - shoe making for Evingsen, wire production for Ihmert and agriculture for Kesbern.

See also: Coat of arms in the Amt Hemer