Last modified: 2010-02-12 by dov gutterman
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image by Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009
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The coat of arms depicts the St. Theresa church in golden on
blue background and with silver bar in base. The building of the
baroque church started in 1754, and it was the first stone
structure built in the young town until four years earlier known
as Friedrichsdorf (after colonel Friedrich Schmidt, commander of
the Gradiska regiment). The flag is light blue with the coat of
arms bordered yellow in the middle. Adopted: around 1995 (?)
Source: Scans of the Nova Gradiska table flag.
Željko Heimer
The city now has issued all its official gazettes since 1993
on line, so the complex and interesting development of the city
symbols may be traced. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the early 1990's coat of arms, apparently it was
already officially disused in 1993.
Here is the list of the relevant decisions. These decisions may
be found in the relevant issued of the official gazette titled
"Novogradiški
glasnik":
(1) Odluka o privremenom ustrojstvu Grada Nova Gradiška,
17.04.1993, Novogradiški glasnik, br. 1/1993, 11.08.1993.
(2) Odluka o ustanovljenju potrebe za izradu grba Grada Nova
Gradiška putem javnog natjecaja, 06.08.1993,
Novogradiški glasnik, br. 4/1993, 14.08.1993.
(3) Rješenje o imenovanju predsjednika i clanova
Ocjenjivackog suda za odabir grba Grada Nova Gradiška,
08.09.1993, Novogradiški glasnik, br. 5/1993, 22.09.1993.
(4) Statut Grada Nova Gradiška, 31.03.1994,
Novogradiški glasnik, br. 3/1994, 31.03.1994.
(5) Odluka o postupku izradbe i pravilima za odabir grba Grada
Nova Gradiška, 07.07.1994, Novogradiški glasnik, br.
5/1994, 08.07.1994.
(6) Odluka o grbu i zastavi Grada Nova Gradiška, 29.05.1995,
Novogradiški glasnik, br. 3/1995, 31.05.1995.
(7) Odluka o izmjenama i dopunama Odluke o grbu i zastavi Grada
Nova Gradiška, 14.09.1995, Novogradiški glasnik, br.
5/1995, 15.09.1995.
(8) Rješenje Ministarstva uprave KLASA:
UP/I-017-02/95-01/42, URBROJ: 515-04-03/1-95-2, 24.10.1995,
Novogradiški glasnik, br. 9/1995, 25.10.1995.
(9) Ispravak Odluke o grbu i zastavi Grada Nova Gradiška,
25.10.1995, Novogradiški glasnik, br. 9/1995, 15.10.1995.
(10) Rješenje o odobrenju uporabe grba Grada Nova
Gradiška, 29.02.1996, Novogradiški glasnik, br. 1/1996,
01.03.1996.
(11) Rješenje o odobrenju uporabe grba Grada Nova
Gradiška, 26.06.1996, Novogradiški glasnik, br. 5/1996,
20.09.1996.
(12) Statut Grada Nova Gradiška, 05.10.2001,
Novogradiški glasnik, br. 7/2001, 06.10.2001.
(13) Odluka o mjerilima za odobravanje uporabe grba i zastave
Grada Nova Gradiška, 26.11.2003, Novogradiški glasnik,
br. 11/2003, 27.11.2003.
(14) Statut Grada Nova Gradiška (Procišceni tekst),
16.07.2009, Novogradiški glasnik, br. 5/2009, 17.07.2009.
The decision (1) is actually the temporary city statutes adopted
after the administrative reform of Croatia in 1993. The decision
is interestng to us only by the fact that it does not menton
neither the coat of arms nor the flag.
Soon the city realized it wants to have a coat of arms, issuing
the decision (2) its title translates to "Decision on
determination of need to devise a coat of arms of the City of
Nova Gradiška by a public contest". By this decision
the city council formally decides that "it needs a coat of
arms", to run a contest to be issued in the national
newspapers "Vecernji list" (it might be interesting to
check if the contest was actually issued there eventually, but
that is an other story), to establish a jury of five members,
among which "at least one member should be a professional
who knows the heraldic rules". This jury was to prepare the
text of the contest, which is to be open for 30 days. It was
prescribed that the design of the coat of arms should
"reflect the landscape, cultural and artistic attributes and
historical and other characteristics of the City", and the
jury shall have to consider the heraldic rules. The prise was set
to the amount of Croatian dinars equivalent to 1500 DEM. After
the contest the city was to adopt the decision on the coat of
arms and request the approval from the central authorities.
The act (3) provides the names of the jury (including
country-wide respectable names from the state archives, a
professor of art, an architect etc.), who were to issue the
contest within five days. There is no indication wheather the
contest was issued and what the jury actually did in the gazette
further on, as we shall see.
In the mean time, the Statutes (4) was adopted in March 1994,
including in its Article 4 a standard determination that the city
has a CIA and a flag, which are to be determined with a separate
decision. As we shall see, this was the valid statutory
prescription until the 2001 Statutes.
In the summer of 1994, the city adopts the decision (5),
invalidating the 1993 decision (2) on the public contest - I
assume that the public contest failed, either resulting in no
response or the response was not of required quality. The new
decision determines a closed contest i.e. a direct ordering of
the coat of arms from an artist (or artists). Again 30 days
deadline was given to the invited artists to provide designs. The
city assembly was to decide on the proposed ideas, to adopt the
symbols, while the winning design was to receive 1500 DEM after
it is approved by the Ministry.
And, indeed, after almost a year, the city assembly adopted the
decision (6), adopting the coat of arms and the flag. The
decision is overall quite standard looking like most other
city/community decisions on the coat of arms/flags, but it is a
nice touch that they included the drawings, not a standard made
of Croatian legislators in those matters. Anyway, I think that it
may be useful to translate the description of the coat of arms in
full - much of this is found similar in the current Statutes:
"The city coat of arms is of an upright shield shape. The
top edge of the shield is straight and the bottom is
semi-circular. The ratio of the width to height is 1:1.25. The
coat of arms countains 4 colours: black, leaf green, cobalt blue
and cadmium yellow (herceforward: black, green, blue and yellow).
All elements within the sheild are edged with thin black
outlines, and the shield is bordered with a highlighted black
line. In the centre of the top part of the sheild is depiction of
the barque Church of St. Theresia, coloured yellow. To its left
and right are depicted historical civic architecture - two
one-storied buildings with arcades in the ground floor, coloured
yellow. Above the church and buildings is a symmetrical
composition of three hills coloured green. The backgund of the
top part is blue. In the middle of the lower part of the shield
is a depiction of a stream - a wavy horizontal blue stripe. Above
its central part is set a depcition of a blue bunch of grapes
with two yellow leaves. The background of the lower part is
green."
The flag is described being 1:2 in the ratio, coloured blue with
"edged with a yellow ribbon" (the drawing reveals us
that this is meant to be a thin border along the outer edges),
with the coat of arms in its centre (it is not explicitly stated,
but the drawing shows the arms to be bordered yellow as well),
the height of the coat of arms to be 1/2 of the flag width.
The ceremonial flag is mentioned to be kept in the mayor's
office, having golden fringe along the edges - otherwise this
ceremonial flag is nowhere else mentioned
(see 1995 Symbols).
This decision was presumably forwarded to the Ministry of
Administration and probably following their opinion, in September
1995 the amendments to the decision were made (7). The amendmends
include only the description of the coat of arms and the flag
leaving everyting else in the original decision as it was. The
green hills and the green bottom part of the coat of arms are now
removed, leaving it all blue shield; the bunch of grapes and its
leaves are removed as well, and the wavy line is made white.
Minor change in the church and building is also made, making all
the "openings" (windows, doors, arcades) black.
The description of the flag is the same, only removing reference
to the yellow edges. The reference to the ceremonial flag is also
removed. The yellow bordering of the coat of arms is still not
mentioned, but is again clearly visible in the attached drawings
in the gazette (see 1995 Symbols).
The Ministry made its act regarding this flag on 24 October 1995,
the ministry act (8) is recounted in short in the gazette,
including the simple blazons that were made by the heraldic
experts working for the Ministry: azure above a bar argent a
church between two buildings all or. The flag is there explicitly
stated to have border around the coat of arms.
This ministry act is issued as an attachment to the
"Correction of the Decision on the coat of arms and the
flag" (9), apparently as if the publisher of the gazette
made a technical error when printing previous documents. The
correction amends the amendments made in (7), now making the
bottom white stripe to be straight and adding the mention of the
yellow border around the coat of arms in the flag.
By this the current city symbols were adopted on 25 December
1995.
After the adoption of the city symbols we have some other city
acts to consider.
In 1996 two decisions (10), (11) were made, granting the use of
the city arms to a local karate club and a local handball
association judges union, to be used on diplomas, uniforms etc.
There is no mention of the coat of arms and the flag in the
official gazette since, until 2001 (for this purpose I ignore the
documents regarding the city award also named the "coat of
arms of the city").
The new Statutes of 2001 (12), the first one after the 1994,
which is unusually long time for Croatian cities, now includes
the description of the coat of arms and the flag in full details
in its Article 7., including all the amendments made in 1995.
In 2003 a new decision was made (13) to replace the 1995
decisions (6), (7) and (9). The decision is titled "on
standards to grant the use of the coat of arms and the flag of
the city of Nova Gradiška", however, it does not do
only that, but also prescribe the modes of use of the coat of
arms and the flag (which are now not described any more, as they
are described in the Statutes), methods of production,
requirements for those who ask for the use of the coat of arms
and flag, the procedure for such grant and penalties for misuse.
And finally, the 2009 Statutes (14), provides the consolidated
text, word for word equal to the 2001 Statutes.
Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009
sb-ng.gif)
image by Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009
sb_ng.gif)
image by Željko Heimer
The coat of arms of Nova Gradiška used in early 1990's
was in green shield a black portal with a golden corn stalk and
in the base divided by a wavy line in white a red lower part of
cog wheel inscribed golden NOVA GRADIŠKA.
Source: Post Card "Ranjeni hrvatski gradovi
1991", Ministartvo zaštite okoliša, prostornog
uredenja i stambeno-komunalnih djelatnosti RH
Željko Heimer
Symbols According to 29 May 1995 Decision
flag
image by Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009
sb-ng95.gif)
coat of arms
image by Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009
Symbols According to 14 September 1995 amendmends
flag
image by Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009
sb-ng95a.gif)
coat of arms
image by Željko Heimer, 29 November 2009