Flag of Lithuania - History

History

The earliest known flags with a Lithuanian identity were recorded in the 15th century Banderia Prutenorum manuscript, written by Jan Długosz. At the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, two distinct flags were present. The majority of the 40 regiments carried a red banner depicting a mounted knight, chasing an unseen enemy. This flag, known as the Vytis, would eventually be used as the Lithuanian war flag, and again in 2004 as the state flag. The remainder of the regiments carried a red banner displaying the Columns of Gediminas. Those that bore the Vytis, also known as the Pahonia, were armies from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while those who bore the Columns of Gediminas were from noble families of Lithuania. Until the end of the 18th century, when they were annexed by the Russian Empire, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the successor states of Lithuania used the Vytis as their flag.

The birth of the yellow, green, and red tricolor occurred during a drive by other European republics to change their flags. One example that gave life to the idea of the tricolor was the French blue, white and red flag adopted after the French Revolution. The only tricolor that existed for Lithuania before the yellow, green and red flag was a green, white and red flag used to represent Lithuania Minor.

It is not known who originally suggested the yellow, green and red, but the idea is usually attributed to Lithuanian exiles living elsewhere in Europe or in the United States during the 19th century. These three colors were frequently used in folk weavings and traditional dress. At the Great Seimas of Vilnius of 1905, this flag was favored over the Vytis banner as the flag of the Lithuanian nation. The Vytis, strongly advocated by Jonas Basanavičius, was not chosen for three reasons: the first was that as part of the drive for national identity, the Seimas (the Lithuanian parliament) wished to distance itself somewhat from the flag of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which also encompassed now-distinct nations such as Belarus, and Ukraine. The second issue was the choice of the color red by revolutionaries who aligned themselves with Marxist or Communist causes. And finally, the flag with Vytis would be too complicated and could not be easily sewn.

Debates about the national flag occurred again in 1917 during the Vilnius Conference. Two colors, green and red, were chosen based on their prevalence in folk art. Artist Antanas Žmuidzinavičius decorated the conference hall with small red and green flags. However, the delegates did not like the design as it was too dark and gloomy. Then Tadas Daugirdas suggested adding a narrow strip of yellow (to symbolize the rising sun) in between the red (clouds lit up by the morning sun) and green (fields and forests). However, the delegates decided that the matter should be settled by a special commission, composed of Basanavičius, Žmuidzinavičius, and Daugirdas. On April 19, 1918 they submitted their final protocol to the Council of Lithuania. The flag was supposed to be a tri-color (yellow at the top, green in the middle, and red at the bottom) with Vytis in the upper left corner or in the middle. The Council accepted the proposal, but the 1922 Constitution of Lithuania did not include any mention of the coat of arms. It adopted the national flag that is used today. Any of the debates failed to produce a historical flag. Discussions of the national flag continued; its opponents considered gold an inappropriate color, since the combination of yellow, green and red did not follow the existing rules of heraldry. However, no changes were made during the inter-war period.