Can anyone assist me in identifying this flag?

[mattb]

Hi All,
My name is Matt and I hail from Sydney, Australia.
I have been interested in military history fr some time and recently purchased a flag from auction. Now the Auctioneers claim it is a German unit flag captured by the Australians in WW1
I have done some reseach and am thinking it is from the Hanover region as I think the flag has the crest of the House of Welf (Hanover) Which is quite an impressive house. (their crest is the prancing horse on the red shield). Ernest Augusta (prince of Hanover) in 1914 is of the house and I am wondering if this flag has any significance re: him.
The back is black with a silver/grey/white Fleur De Lys.
Any help would be greatly appreciate
thanks a lot!
Matt

[donnie]

Hi mate,

Not sure that it helps much but i would say that the horse is the White Horse Of Hanover.

All the best, Donnie

[wfrad]

I would go along with donnie, seems to be the Horse of the Saxons, symbol of Lower Saxony from the 14th Cent later on Hanover. I don't believe it to be a regimental standard from before WWI, too plain. Simply haven't a clue!

[JamesWatson]

Impressive flag. Might best be added to the Imperial part of the forum.

[Michael Ryan]

Hi, More a guess than a fact but I would be inclined to see it as a civic banner, something you might see in a town hall?? A nice item none-the-less.
Regards MR

[HPL2008]

Surely a Boy Scouts flag.

This thread is more than five years old, but just in case this is still of interest, see a discussion of this item at:

Unidentified flags (Germany) - Fahnen Flaggen Fahne Flagge Flaggen-Shop Versand kaufen bestellen

[Michael Ryan]

Hi HPL, I did not notice the dates on the previous posts and only reacted to the last before mine. The link makes interesting reading and the contents are excellent however, the flag its self looks to me to be too old to be post war but as I said in my post, it is just a guess and I stand corrected. The emblem may be identical to a Scout emblem but is that proof positive that it is a Scout emblem? Given that this particular emblem turns up in a variety of organisations and coats of arms etc. I would sight the swastica. Definitely Nazi!! But is it? It appears on some British savings stamps from pre WWII days. Ergo possibly but not definately Nazi. So to draw a difinative conclusion based purely on the actual symbol may be logical but may not be entirly correct?? Please feel free to shoot me down on this one!!
Cheers once again Michael.

[HPL2008]

The link makes interesting reading and the contents are excellent however, the flag its self looks to me to be too old to be post war but as I said in my post, it is just a guess and I stand corrected. The emblem may be identical to a Scout emblem but is that proof positive that it is a Scout emblem? Given that this particular emblem turns up in a variety of organisations and coats of arms etc. I would sight the swastica. Definitely Nazi!! But is it? It appears on some British savings stamps from pre WWII days. Ergo possibly but not definately Nazi. So to draw a difinative conclusion based purely on the actual symbol may be logical but may not be entirly correct?? Please feel free to shoot me down on this one!!

Relax; I have no intention to shoot down anybody.

It's not just the presence of a Fleur-de-Lys symbol as such, but the specific variety of its graphic design.

As you said, this is a very common heraldic symbol found in a myriad of uses. However, it is also found in a myriad of design variations, and this particular variant of the Fleur-de-Lys - with its straight outlines forming a diamond shape (i.e. the version known in German as a Rautenlilie) - is a boy scout variety of the symbol.

(Or, to stay with the above Swastika example: Indeed, this is an ancient symbol; the Nazis did not invent it and were neither the first nor the only ones to use it. But, it too, comes in an endless variety of designs and if I see a right-turned, straight-angled, black Swastika in a white circle on a red field, then I know it is a Nazi-related one.)

Also, I didn't say that the flag was post-war myself; this was stated at the site linked above. The Rautenlilie as such - while re-introduced for Germany's post-war boy scout movement - was originally designed for the Neudeutscher Pfadfinderbund [New German Boy Scouts' League] in 1926.