European Civic Coats of Arms [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION I do not wish to engage in any profound philosophizing upon human fancies, hobbies and pastimes but I have a sneaking suspicion that in a corner of everyone's mind there survives a love of the picture books of our child-hood, a desire to again turn over the colourful pages and to discover the world anew in pictures that make it look different, perhaps brighter than the commonplace world in which we live. It may have happened to others, as it happened to me, that early in life they came upon pages of brightly painted coats of arms depicting strange, grinning lions and eagles with outspread wings, twisting dolphins, smiling suns and glittering stars, dignified crosses and proudly rearing unicorns, savages swinging clubs and curved scimitars cutting through bloody necks. That colourful medley of brightly glowing colours and bold shapes enchanted and captured my imagination. I began to wonder what it all meant; why these pictures had been painted in just that way and for how long they had been in existence; and before I knew it, I was under their spell and became a student of heraldry. But this day and age is one of spécialisation. Knowledge is far too comprehensive on many hobbies for one per-son to enclose it all. Stamp collectors no longer collect just stamps, but only stamps of one country or on one theme, and this applies equally to heraldry. While one person studies the heraldry of the British Isles, another concentrâtes on French coats of arms, and a third is charmed by Japanese symbols. But there is one branch of heraldry that has remained something of a Cinderella, namely the coats of arms of towns and cities, or civic heraldry. Many thick and learned tomes as well as slender, popular books have been written