Belchatów city (Poland)

Bełchatów county, Lodzkie Vojvodship

Last modified: 2009-08-22 by jarig bakker
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• Bełchatów city flag
• Bełchatów city Coat of Arms

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Bełchatów city flag

We have a flag of the City of Belchatów on your FOTW page (by Gunnar Staack 2000, which is correct as the flag of 1997 (not 1987) but without specifying what kind of commune it is. (There is also Bełchatów - a rural commune).

Bełchatów - urban commune, Bełchatów County, Łódzkie Voivodship.
Arms of the City show, on the light-blue heraldic shield, a tree on the green hill with yellow leaves, red fruits and black trunk. On the trunk of the tree, the red
snake is wrapped around and there are two figures on both side of the tree - - on the right - Adam, and on the left - Eve. Their bodies in natural color, hair and fig leaves - yellow.

This Coat of Arms is based on the scene described in the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament. The oldest version of Coa was patterned on the seal of the town dated 1798. It is believed the this scene was selected for the town's Arms to underscore the motif of unity of multi-religious community - Catholics, Jews and Eastern Orthodox.
The older version of the Coat of Arms clashed with the heraldic standards - the green snake shouldn't coexist with the blue sky - so the City Council requested a correction from the Heraldic Commission in Warsaw.
There was a humorous debate over the proposals made by the Commission in 1997: The leftist deputies (SLD) liked the idea of the red background, but it was opposed by the rightist members of the City Council-(Unia Wolnosci-Freedom Union) - who were in favor of the blue background. But the leftists, after they
found out in the heraldic dictionary that the snake stands for "wisdom", swiftly agreed to have a red snake in the Coat of Arms leaving the rightists happy with the blue shield.
The present Coat of Arms was finally adopted by the City Council on April 28, 1997 (Resolution # 58/V/97).

Flag: a rectangle composed of three equal horizontal bands, each of 1/3 of the width of the flag.
Light-blue corresponds to the color of the sky, yellow - to the color of the leaves and Adam's and Eve's hair and the green reflects the terrain on which they stand.
PS: the blue is light ("blekitny) in both, Kupski's and Wikipedia's renditions of the flag.
Chrystian Kretowicz, 29 Sep 2008

Bełchatów city Coat of Arms