Hochspeyer
HOCHSPEYER
State : Rheinland-Pfalz
District (Kreis) : Kaiserslautern
Verbandsgemeinde : Verbandsgemeinde Hochspeyer
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| English | blazon wanted |
Origin/meaning
The arms were officially granted on February 26, 1979.
The oldest (and only) seal of the village dates from 1743, and shows a shield with a cross, and above the shield a letter H. The cross is taken from the Counts of Leiningen-Dagsburg, to which the village historically belonged. They used the cross, originally taken from the Aspremont estate, as an inescutcheon on their arms since 1466. The letter H was simply the initial of the village.
The cross, with or without the letter H, were also used on borderstones in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The arms were first granted on March 4, 1960.
The arms show in the upper half the eagle of the Counts of Leiningen, and in the base the cross with the letter H. In 1979 the arms were slightly changed by adding a small silver barrulet and changing the colour of the letter H to the more historical red.
The barrulet, which is part of the official blazon, however is sometimes forgotten, see the badge of the local fire brigade, which shows the wrong arms !
Similarly, the local musical association still uses the 1960 arms in their badge:
Already in 1926 the council tried to obtain arms. The proposal was the eagle of Leiningen with a letter H. For unknown reasons the Bavarian State Archives in Speyer were reluctant to grant these arms, and thus nothing happened.
Hupp designed arms in 1927 based on the old seal, and presumed that the cross was the cross of the State of Speyer, with the H above the shield standing for Hoch (high). He thus showed the arms as a silver cross in blue, the colours of the State of Speyer. The village, however, was never part of Speyer.
The arms by Hupp (which were never granted and probably also not officially adopted) :
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© since 1995, Heraldry of the World, Ralf Hartemink 
Index of the site
Literature: Debus, 1988; Hupp, 1927; Von Jan, 1968.