Bulgarian flag

[Hatshepsut]

Bulgarian flag

We Bulgarians love the celebrations. We have personal, national, calendar, church holidays. There is nothing wrong with us and our families celebrating them all. It is good to honor traditions, but we must also know the history around them. Here I raise the question of history, Bulgarianness and symbolism and open the topic of the Bulgarian tricolor. On the national holiday – March 3 – many Bulgarians will fly the national flag in expression of patriotism and deep respect for those who gave their lives for the freedom of Bulgaria. But how many of them know why our flag is exactly in these three colors, what is their symbolism?

The science of making flags and all kinds of flags is called Vexillology. The word comes from the Latin vexillum, which translates as a military flag used by Roman legions. The prototypes of modern flags in Europe and the Middle East were mostly wooden, metal and leather images, and in the Far East – multicolored canvases. Today, the symbolic weight of flags is performed by colors and their combinations, the most common shape being rectangular. The first flags were made 5,000 years ago in Egypt. They were used by the ancient Egyptians to show that certain personalities or gods were present at an event. Flags were also a hallmark of shipping. Gradually, with the emergence of nation-states and the establishment of statehood, the first national flags emerged.

Everywhere in the literature there will be phrases such as “… from the earliest times the flag has been considered an expression of national identity and a symbol of the power and sovereignty of a people. No country was a name. There is no army without a flag. ” It is true … If the functions of the coat of arms are mainly related to the legal characteristics / freedom, property, identity /, then the flag with its historical development accepts the meaning of power and especially of belonging. In the colors of their flag, ancient peoples encode the memory of their past and the essence they must preserve.

Many national flags rely on tricolor symbols aimed at emphasizing civic values. The crescent moon has become a symbol of Islam and is often found on the national flags of Muslim countries. Colors can express different things – nature, sky, sea or in abstract terms such as faith, peace, unity of the nation.

Today the Bulgarian flag is composed of white, green and red, located respectively horizontally below each other. It was officially declared the flag of the Principality of Bulgaria in 1879, and it was not clear what exactly the colors should symbolize. To this day, there is no consensus on what each of them means.

Today's textbooks state: “White symbolizes freedom, green – the green forests and fields of Bulgaria, and red – the blood of the heroes and victims who died for the freedom of Bulgaria.” In the first place is white – a symbol of spirit and spirituality. Although militant under duress, but in fact a peaceful people, we have left the red to stand at the bottom of our flag. Thus, our flag truly becomes a symbol of our national identity, ancient origins and power.

According to one of the less common legends, our tricolor is directly related to the military glory of our army. The color flag is associated with the ancient Bulgarian army. Her left wing had white strips of hooves tied around it. These were lightly armed cavalry, famous for their speed and surprise attack. The right wing was composed of heavily armed cavalry, which had red ribbons tied. In the middle were the elite Bulgarian troops, with green stripes on their hooves. White symbolizes peace and a pure and holy republic, green – the fertility of the Bulgarian lands and the forest – the protector of the Bulgarian rebels during the Renaissance, and red – the courage and hope of the people.

https://viaevita.com/bulgarian-flag/


The flag of Bulgaria (Bulgarian: знаме на България, romanized: zname na Bǎlgariya) is a tricolour consisting of three equal-sized horizontal bands of (from top to bottom) white, green, and red. The flag was first adopted after the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, when Bulgaria gained de facto independence. The national flag at times was charged with the state emblem, especially during the communist era. The current flag was re-established with the 1991 Constitution of Bulgaria and was confirmed in a 1998 law.

History

First Bulgarian Empire

In 866, Pope Nicholas I advised Prince Boris who had recently Christianised his people to switch from the practice of using a horse tail as a banner to adopting the Holy Cross.

Later illuminated versions of the chronicles of John Skylitzes and Constantine Manasses depict the army of Khan Krum carrying flags either in monotone red, or red with a black border. The army of Simeon the Great is also depicted carrying red banners of varying shape. The Radziwiłł Chronicle also depicts Tzar Simeon I's army under a red flag in the 921-922 campaign against Byzantium, but the depiction of the Hungarian invasion of 894 featured the Bulgarian fortress of Drastar under a white flag with a crescent and a six-pointed star. Any pictorial representations of flags in the manuscripts mentioned above, regardless of the faction or time depicted, conform strongly to the overall illustration style used in each manuscript. In addition, none of those manuscripts dates to the time of the First Bulgarian Empire. The historicity of those flags is thus impossible to verify.

Second Bulgarian Empire

Depictions of Bulgarian flags can be seen on various portolan maps from the 14th and 15th centuries. On those maps, the flags commonly have a white or golden background and depict either the insignia of the ruling House of Shishman, or unknown symbols in red. Those drawings are markedly more diverse than the flags of the neighboring countries such as the Eastern Roman Empire, the Golden Horde or the Serbian Empire, which in the same maps are largely consistent.

Third Bulgarian state

After the liberation of Bulgaria following the Russo-Turkish War in 1878, the flag was described in the Tarnovo Constitution of 1879 as follows:

Art. 23. The Bulgarian people's flag is three-coloured and consists of white, green and red colours, placed horizontally.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of Bulgaria in 1946, the new Dimitrov Constitution of 1947 changed the flag: the colors and their order remained the same, but the new national emblem was placed on the left side of the white stripe. The new emblem contained a lion within a wreath of wheat ears below a red star and above a ribbon bearing the date 9.IХ.1944 (9 September 1944), the day of the coup d'état of 1944 which had ended the monarchy. In 1971, the emblem (and thus the flag) was slightly modified - the ribbon was parted in two, bearing the years 681 and 1944, the former being the year of the establishment of the First Bulgarian Empire.

After the fall of Communism in 1990, the then-enforced Zhivkov Constitution was amended so the flag could be reverted to the pre-Communist era. The new Constitution of Bulgaria, adopted in 1991, describes the Bulgarian flag as follows:

Art. 166. The flag of the Republic of Bulgaria shall be a tricolour: white, green and red from top, placed horizontally.

A popular version of the flag, which has no official status, is also commonly known. It has the full coat of arms on the left of the flag, placed across the white and green fields only.

Flag law

According to the Law for the State Seal and National Flag of the Republic of Bulgaria, promulgated on 24 April 1998:

Art. 15. (1) The national flag of the Republic of Bulgaria is a national symbol which expresses the independence and sovereignty of the Bulgarian state.

(2) The national flag of the Republic of Bulgaria is tricolour: white, green and red fields, placed horizontally from the top downwards. On fixing the national flag in a vertical situation of the carrying body the colours shall be arranged from left to right - white, green, red.

(3) The national flag is of a rectangular shape. The fields of the individual colours shall be equal in size and shall be situated along the horizontal of the rectangular

Other Bulgarian flags


Current Bulgarian war flag, similar to Bulgarian war flags from period 1880s–mid 1940s. The motto in Bulgarian means "God is with us".


Standard of the Tsar (approx. 1937–1946)


Naval ensign of Bulgaria


Naval jack of Bulgaria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bulgaria

[Hatshepsut]

140 years since the national flag of Bulgaria was legalized

The Bulgarian national flag is three-coloured and consists of white, green and red colours, placed horizontally, reads the Law for the State Seal and National Flag of the Republic of Bulgaria, while its colours and their order is connected with Stiliana Paraskevova and the flag of Braila.

“The history of the Bulgarian flag goes back to 1862 when the three colours first appeared on the uniforms of the First Bulgarian Legion, set up by Rakovski. The three colours were put in their present order for the first time on the flag designed in the Romanian town of Braila by a merchant and a champion of the national cause – Ivan Paraskevov,” Lilia Krivorova from the National Museum of Military History says. “He entrusted his 14-year old daughter Stiliana with making and embroidering the flag, and work on it, which spanned 6 months, was kept a secret until the flag was ready in April 1877.”

Flag of Stiliana Paraskevova

There is an embroidered lion on its hind legs with a crown on its head on the flag, but it disappears during the discussion of the constitution of the newly liberated Principality of Bulgaria.

“It turns out there is no text in the constitution about the flag. After brief deliberations, on 26 March, 1879, the MPs voted article 23, thus legalizing the colours of the national flag, omitting the lion. According to the researcher of the flag of Braila colonel Ivan Stoychev, this happened in a haste,” Lilia Krivorova says. “In 1881 the Braila flag was handed over to the prince's palace. It was only in 1930, two years before her death that Stiliana Paraskevova found out that the flag she had made was there and got permission to see it. The last time she saw her handiwork she kissed it and cried. After 1937, Stiliana's own signature, embroidered in the lower corner of the flag, was cut away, nobody knows by whom or when.”

The Braila flag is currently in safe-keeping in a special repository of the Museum of Military History along with other battle flags.

“A constant temperature is maintained and there is no direct sunlight. The flag has undergone restoration and conservation twice – in 1965 and in 1984. It was shown to the general public on 3 March, 2014 as part of an exhibition dedicated to the symbols of Bulgarian statehood, and also on 3 March, 2017 on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the start of the Russo-Turkish war. There is a copy of the flag though it is not on permanent display,” Lilia Krivorova says.

The national flag remained unchanged until the end of World War 2. When the constitution of the People's Republic of Bulgaria was adopted in 1947 the lion made its reappearance, though this time without a crown, and in 1991 the 7th Grand National Assembly took the coat of arms off the national flag and it has remained unaltered ever since.

“Many people think there is a coat of arms on the Bulgarian flag but there isn't the coat of arms is a separate constitutional symbol. Many have no idea that the Bulgarian flag is not produced, it is reproduced because such are the words used in the Law, and it meets very specific standards and rules,” says Atanaska Velcheva whose company was the first certified company in Bulgaria with permission to reproduce the Bulgarian flag. “The colours are strictly fixed according to the Pantone scale. The shape is rectangular in a 3-5 length/width ratio."

The thread and the seams also have to meet strict requirements, and that is true even of the hems.

“It is not just stitching three pieces of cloth together,” Atanaska Velcheva goes on to say. “I am very proud to be making the national symbol. In my line of work I get to meet people who are proud of their country, and when I see people like them I firmly believe that Bulgaria will continue to exist for centuries to come.”

English Milena Daynova

https://bnr.bg/en/post/101098466/140-years-since-the-national-flag-of-bulgaria-was-legalized