Flag of Hanover (Prussian Province)

Hanover came to Prussia differently from the other provinces: by conquest. In the German War of 1866 the Kingdom of Hanover stood on Austria's side, won one last victory at Langensalza — and capitulated two days later. Prussia annexed the country and made it a province with Hanover as its capital. The rupture had a long afterlife: the Guelph-minded German-Hanoverian Party still entered the Reichstag well into the twentieth century. The province reached from the North Sea to the Harz and took in East Frisia, the Emsland, the Lüneburg Heath and the Weser Uplands — bog, heath and marsh, along with the harbours on the Ems and the salt mining around Lüneburg. In 1946 it became a state of its own for a few weeks before merging that same year into Lower Saxony.

Meaning

The flag shows two horizontal bands of equal width: yellow above, white below. Yellow and white — gold and silver — had been Hanover's state colours since the days of the kingdom and go back to the colours of the House of Guelph, which ruled in Hanover for centuries. Prussia left the new province these colours, although it had acquired the land by force. The flag itself carries no device, only the two bands. Depictions do exist with the leaping white Saxon Steed on the stripes; that was not the official version of the provincial flag — the horse belongs to the coat of arms, from which only the colours were taken here.