Flag of Saxony (Prussian Province)

The Province of Saxony came into being in 1816 out of what Prussia took from the Kingdom of Saxony at the Congress of Vienna — nearly half its territory — together with the Altmark, the Duchy of Magdeburg, Halberstadt and the country around Erfurt. Magdeburg was its capital, and it was administered in the districts of Magdeburg, Merseburg and Erfurt. It ranked among the wealthiest provinces of the state: the black earth of the Magdeburg Börde made it Germany's sugar-beet chamber, potash mining lay around Staßfurt, and around Halle, Bitterfeld and Leuna grew one of Europe's largest chemical and lignite districts. The province was divided in 1944; its territory today belongs mostly to Saxony-Anhalt, the Erfurt part to Thuringia.

Meaning

The flag shows two horizontal bands of equal width: black above, yellow below. These are the old colours of the Duchy of Saxony, whose arms bear a field barry of ten black and gold with the green crancelin; gold appears on the flag as yellow. The Prussian province took these colours from the land out of whose inheritance it had largely been formed. The flag itself carries no device, only the two bands. Depictions do exist with the crancelin or the Prussian eagle on the stripes; that was not the official version of the provincial flag — such devices belong to the coat of arms, from which only the colours were taken here.