Arms of Ebenau, Austria
Granted 1962
Blazon: Per pale gules a cross paté throughout argent and of the last a palet couped, terminating in chief with a bendlet sinister couped, and in base with a bendlet couped, crossed in the middle by three bars also couped, all gules.
The sinister half of these arms was tricky to blazon, but it also is a great opportunity to talk about house marks (Hausmarken). They hail primarily from Germanic and Scandanavian cultures. House marks do have some things in common with heraldry - they were intended to be unique and often (though not necessarily) represented families or municipalities. However, colors were irrelevant to house marks, and they weren’t granted by anyone’s authority; you could just make up your own as long as it was visually distinct. (There’s absolutely a class component here; coats of arms, which belonged almost exclusively to the upper classes, were/are considered more prestigious than the house marks of the lower classes.) Most house marks were made up of straight lines, the better to be scratched into a wide variety of surfaces. In many ways, they were similar to the merchant’s marks that presaged today’s brand logos, although house marks were more personal than commercial. The house mark in Ebenau’s arms belonged to the Steinhauser family, who founded a nearby bronze factory; the mining and armory industries were central to the local economy. The cross in the dexter half honors the local patron saint, St. Florian.
