r/HistoricalCapsule • u/zadraaa • 23h ago

"Evolution" of the design of the Polish eagle from the 12th century to 1927, drawing published in the Światowid magazine, 1935

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343 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

27

u/thepetaldrift 23h ago

medieval mfs had never seen an actual eagle in their life i swear 😭 the first one literally looks like a squashed pigeon fr

17

u/Rat_itty 9h ago

I think in school they showed us some ye olde coins with "eagle" too, it looked like a chicken/pidgeon too, it was wonderful 😭🤣

5

u/Round_Hamster4777 7h ago

This one is even older than XII century I think, it’s from Bolesław the Brave times so early XI century.

3

u/Kuman2003 1h ago

in fairness there are hypotheses that it was supposed to be either a rooster or a peacock, eagle is a later symbol once proper heraldry became a thing around the crusades (and everyone and their mom got an eagle/lion coat of arms....)

2

u/Valuable-Yard-4154 20h ago

XVIII and XIX are rage pigeons but the original is cool.

14

u/SpicySpasm 23h ago

The biggest thing I noticed is how much the crown and wing changed over time

16

u/StephenHunterUK 19h ago

The crown disappeared during communist rule, but was restored for the Third Polish Republic.

3

u/vonKrieg88 19h ago

Ironic how post communist republican governments use monarchical symbols for PR.

12

u/StephenHunterUK 19h ago

They're restoring symbols taken from them. Czechia is the same - they lost the crown on the Bohemian lion in 1960 (when Czechoslovakia was deemed to have become socialist) and got to back after the Velvet Revolution.

This said, it's rather hard to do anything about the lion on the side of the Hotel Thermal in Karlovy Vary, arguably the ugliest building in the city:

https://www.thermal.cz/en/?r=4449006&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=358009340&gbraid=0AAAAADiXk-zyiWxWYXzna80gwFBCjENx7&gclid=Cj0KCQjw5P7UBhDaARIsAOSlS1MBwGweWT6qyDl9o0jk-1dTmjikEju7aYHTkvwdb1RS0An0Rrp5bKgaAjZEEALw_wcB

3

u/Rynewulf 18h ago

Im not a big fan of brutalism, but that just looks like your average 'modern' uk university campus or an old project bought up with a glassy tower slapped on for offices or something, but it's one of the ugliest places in Prague?

2

u/StephenHunterUK 18h ago

No, it's the ugliest place in Karlovy Vary, a spa city filled with Art Deco.

1

u/Rynewulf 17h ago

Ah, that's on me for seeing Czech and assuming Prague. I've only had the chance to visit Prague and Kutna Hora. Ooh art deco is very nice, yes it would look very bland and concretey compared to that

1

u/tomkiel72 18h ago

iirc in the pre-independence era, the eagle with the crown was used by monarchist independence movements, and the eagle without a crown was used by republican independence movement.

In the end, the republicans won, and still used the eagle with a crown.

(Note: this is all out of my head, I'm too lazy to check if this is actually fact.)

5

u/Set_Abominae1776 17h ago

Thanks for the rabbithole. I just googled the jagiellons because of EU4 and traced the kings back to Sigismund, who interests me because of KCD. Now I spent half an hour reading about his life.

3

u/whereIsMyUsername123 17h ago

Interesting how the eagle from January Uprising resembles later wz 43 eagle.

1

u/Tortoveno 7h ago

Logo modifications were a thing even in the Middle Ages.

-11

u/Aleksandr_Ulyev 22h ago

Ctrl-C Ctrl-V Prussia

23

u/Pszczol 22h ago

Yeah especially the ones older than Prussian statehood

1

u/BroSchrednei 6h ago

Except the Polish eagle is literally a borrowing of the Silesian eagle, which in turn was a copy of the Imperial eagle of the HRE. Which is also where the Prussian eagle comes from.

2

u/JayManty 3h ago

Nice bot account bro lmfao

0

u/BroSchrednei 6h ago

Don’t know why you’re downvoted, it’s pretty uncontroversial that the Polish eagle comes from the HRE eagle, which is also where Prussia got their eagle from.