Flag of West Prussia (Prussian Province)

The Province of West Prussia was created in 1773 after the First Partition of Poland, largely from the lands of Royal Prussia, which had belonged to the Polish crown for three centuries. It lay on both banks of the lower Vistula and linked Brandenburg with East Prussia. From 1793 the capital was Danzig, before that Marienwerder. Between 1824 and 1878 the territory formed part of the Province of Prussia; afterwards West Prussia existed in its own right again. The large towns of Danzig, Elbing and Thorn were mainly German-speaking, the countryside at first largely Polish. The First World War ended the province: in 1920 most of it passed to the new Polish state and formed the so-called Corridor, Danzig became a Free City, and an eastern strip around Elbing and Marienwerder stayed with the German Reich and was joined to East Prussia. Today the area forms the main part of the Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship.

Meaning

The flag shows three horizontal bands of equal width in black, white and black. These are the colours of Prussia, also carried by the neighbouring province of East Prussia — there in two bands, here in three. Black and white go back to the Teutonic Order, whose land West Prussia originally was and which bore a black cross on white. Like every Prussian provincial flag this one stays without any charge: stripes only, no arms, no emblem. The West Prussian coat of arms, with its black eagle holding a sword, belongs to heraldry and was not part of the flag. Depictions that place it on the stripes nevertheless exist — official they were not.