Flag of Hohenzollern (Prussian Province)

Hohenzollern was the smallest and most peculiar of Prussia's provinces: some 1,100 square kilometres in the middle of southern Germany, enclosed by Württemberg and Baden, more than 500 kilometres from Berlin. It came about in 1850, after the princes of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen abdicated in the revolutionary year of 1848 and handed their lands to the Prussian king — their own kinsman, for the House of Hohenzollern originated here. The seat of administration was Sigmaringen. The province stayed rural, Catholic and largely without industry, a Prussian foreign body in Swabian surroundings. In 1946 its territory became part of Württemberg-Hohenzollern, and since 1952 it has belonged to Baden-Württemberg.

Meaning

The flag shows two horizontal bands of equal width: white above, black below. These are the ancestral colours of the House of Hohenzollern, which owes this landscape its name and rose from here to become Prussia's royal and Germany's imperial dynasty. Prussia as a state carried the same pair — but the other way round, black above white. The small ancestral province thus kept the older order. The flag bears no charge, only the two bands. The Hohenzollern arms, with their shield quartered in silver and black, belong to heraldry; depictions that place them on the stripes do not match the official version.