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Saterland (Germany)

Cloppenburg County, Lower Saxony

Last modified: 2008-12-26 by jarig bakker
Keywords: saterland |
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[Municipality of Saterland (Cloppenburg County, Lower Saxony, Germany)] 3:5 image by Stefan Schwoon, 6 Sep 2001

See also:

Municipality of Saterland

Cycling towards the Danish-German border, I saw the flag of Saterland, yellow and blue with the arms: Charlemagne on a throne. Saterland being the home of the Sater-Frisians, I wonder if this is a reference to the Charles privilege.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 27 Aug 2001

Yes, the inclusion of Charlemagne is a reference to those privileges. More information on the history of the arms is described on this website (in German). Saterland is a municipality in Cloppenburg county in Lower Saxony, Germany. The municipality consists of four villages: Strücklingen, Ramsloh, Scharrel, and Sedelsberg. Its 12,000 inhabitants are called Saterfriesen (Sater-Frisians), 2,000 of whom speak Saterfriesisch, a dialect of the otherwise extinct East Frisian language. Allegedly Saterland is the smallest language island in Europe.
Stefan Schwoon, 6 Sep 2001

I expect the flag as drawn by you drew exists. However, the version I saw was a vertical one.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 6 Sep 2001

Saterland variant flag

[Saterland variant flag] image by J. Patrick Fischer, 27 Dec 2008

FOTW shows above a bicolor flag with CoA, but the official website of Saterland community shows a flag with three stripes light blue - yellow - light blue with the CoA in the yellow stripe. The stripes have a ratio of 1:3:1.
J. Patrick Fischer, 27 Dec 2008

Sagelterland doubtful flag

[Sagelterland (North Frisia, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany)] image by Jaume Ollé

Five diagonally striped flag yellow-red-white-red-yellow, with 3 heart-shaped leaves. This flag design is clearly inspired by the traditional flag of the Dutch province of Fryslân. Note that Sagelterland is traditionally Frisian. In use since 1970. Also Saterland (Frisian: Sealterlân), near the Dutch border in Lower Saxony.
Norman Martin, Mar1998

Concerning the flag of "Sagelterland": Sagelterland is a variant name of Saterland. Also, I have never seen this flag outside of FotW-ws. What is the source for it?
Moreover, the text on the Sagelterland flag contains the remark "This flag design is clearly inspired by the traditional flag of the Dutch province of Friesland." I presume that this remark is based on the three lily leaves in the white stripe. If indeed the flag is genuine and refers to Saterland, then there is another possible explanation for the lily leaves: These could be taken from the coat-of-arms of the Counts of Tecklenburg, who ruled the area temporarily in the 14th century. The lily leaves also appear in the CoAs of the county of Cloppenburg, to which Saterland belongs, and of the neighbouring town of Friesoythe.
However, this is mere speculation as long as we do not know anything more about this flag.
Stefan Schwoon, 7 Dec 2004