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The double-headed eagle is an iconographic symbol originating in the Bronze Age. A heraldic charge, it is used with the concept of an empire. Most modern uses of the emblem are directly or indirectly associated with its use by the late Byzantine Empire, originally a dynastic emblem of the Palaiologoi.
In 1433 the double-headed eagle was adopted by Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor. Thereafter the double-headed eagle was used as the arms of the German emperor, and hence as the symbol of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. From the 12th century the Emperors also used a personal coat of arms separate from the imperial arms.
Before the mid-13th century, however, the Imperial Eagle was an Imperial symbol in its own right, and not used yet as a heraldic charge in a coat of arms. An early depiction of a double-headed Imperial Eagle in a heraldic shield, attributed to Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, is found in the Chronica Majora by Matthew Paris (circa 1250).
Three-headed eagle arms of Reinmar von Zweter, from the Codex Manesse. According to Neubecker, the German imperial eagle goes back to the ancient Romans, and the newly crowned emperor Charlemagne erected an imperial eagle – a symbol that would carry over all the way to modern Germany – at his palace at Aachen.
The double-headed eagle was used in the breakaway Empire of Trebizond as well. Western portolans of the 14th–15th centuries use the double-headed eagle (silver/golden on red/vermilion) as the symbol of Trebizond rather than Constantinople. Single-headed eagles are also attested in Trapezuntine coins, and a 1421 source depicts the Trapezuntine ...
The Reichsadler (" Imperial Eagle") was the heraldic eagle, derived from the Roman eagle standard, used by the Holy Roman Emperors and in modern coats of arms of Germany, including those of the Second German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and the "Third Reich" (Nazi Germany, 1933–1945). The same design has remained in ...
The new Prussian arms depicted a single black eagle, displayed in a more natural than heraldic style. While part of Nazi Germany, the free state's arms depicted a single black eagle, more stylized than before but not in a heraldic manner, with a swastika and the phrase Gott mit uns beginning in 1933.
The coats of arms of the House of Habsburg were the heraldic emblems of their members and their territories, such as Austria-Hungary and the Austrian Empire.Historian Michel Pastoureau says that the original purpose of heraldic emblems and seals was to facilitate the exercise of power and the identification of the ruler, due to what they offered for achieving these aims.