Flag of Pomerania (Prussian Province)

The Province of Pomerania was created in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, when Prussia joined the old Duchy of Pomerania to the north-eastern part of the Neumark. The result stretched some 400 kilometres along the Baltic coast and fell into two unequal halves: Western Pomerania beyond the Oder, with Stralsund, Greifswald and the island of Rügen, and the far larger Farther Pomerania to the east. The capital was Stettin, then Prussia's third city and Berlin's seaport. Pomerania had a reputation for being poor and remote, a land of large estates, pine forest and sandy soil. Only the railway and the new fashion for seaside resorts brought money to the coast in the late nineteenth century. The Second World War ended the province: in 1945 the territory east of the Oder and Neisse passed under Polish administration, while the western remainder forms the eastern part of today's Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Meaning

The flag shows two horizontal bands of equal width: blue above, white below. These are the colours of the province, laid down by a Prussian cabinet order of 22 October 1882 that gave every province its own. Blue and white have endured as Pomeranian colours — the Vorpommern region still carries them and deliberately took them up again in 1996. The official flag manages without any additional charge: two bands and nothing else. Alongside it, depictions with a griffin are also common. The red griffin on silver is Pomerania's heraldic beast and goes back to the House of Griffin, which ruled the region for five centuries. Such versions were not the official flag, however — the emblem comes from the coat of arms and was placed onto the stripes afterwards, as often happens in flag design.

Hymn

The song that established itself as the provincial anthem was the Pommernlied, also simply called the Song of the Pomeranians. The words were written in 1851 by the Lutheran theologian and poet Adolf Pompe (1831–1889), born in Stettin and buried in Demmin. Pompe wrote more than fifty poems; only this one is remembered. The song was never official — it spread through use, at festivals, in clubs and schools. After 1945 it took on a second, bitter meaning: for the refugees and expellees from Farther Pomerania it became a song of remembrance for a lost homeland, sung regularly at reunions. In the Vorpommern region it still belongs to the local repertoire.