I was just on facebook and saw a post that made the following statement: Only two people in history had their own symbols, Hitler (followed by a swastika) and Obama (followed by a red, white and blue capital O). Here’s the link to the site referenced by the post. The actual part posted on facebook is found on page two.
Okay, the guy’s an idiot and I’m not interested in any opinions about the foolishness of the post or the link. The site linked to is ignorant beyond belief and all I could do was glace over a couple things before giving up. Obviously we’re dealing with. . uh . . hmmm . . well, whatever it is it’s a really good example of it and we needn’t dwell on it further.
My question is - what other people, if any, had personal symbols? You can use your own judgement on what constitutes a personal symbol and how personal they were.
My guess is that neither Hitler nor Obama actually sat down and chose those symbols to represent themselves. For various reasons they just became associated with them. With Hitler (while I guess he did pick the swastika himself I’m not sure how much he personally associated himself with it) I’d imagine they were both so reviled that they just seemed to go together. Obama’s “symbol”, I’m suspecting, was some invention of the Democratic party’s apparatchik and became attached to him largely through the internet. I’m not much attached to either theory, nor are they particularly well thought out, so feel free to fight ignorance.
Any and every political candidate with a campaign logo (which is what the Obama logo was).
And the swastika was not HITLER’s symbol, it was the symbol of the Nazi Party. And, actually, Hitler did design the Nazi symbol himself. He talks about it in Mein Kampf, even discussing the size of the white circle and he width of the legs of the cross.
I think you’re right about the Hitler/Obama symbols, which is pretty much what I said in the OP. But, when you see either symbol who do you think of? Which I guess is close enough to a personal symbol.
What’s Prince’s personal symbol? If I saw it would I automatically think of him?
I’m going with ‘no’ here. Except for the one’s that had the person’s name in them I would not have known who they referenced. Of course if one of them gets elected then it would probably fall into common use. You’d think though that they could come up with something that didn’t so blatantly copy Obamba.
Yeah, the bee works, or at least probably worked well back in the day when he was more in the news. Don’t think many people would automatically think Napoleon today if they saw it.
Wiki had this to say about the bee symbol: The bee was chosen by Napoleon to link the new dynasty to the ancient kingdom of France. Golden bees, being found in 1653 in Tournai in the tomb of Childeric I, father of Clovis I and founder of the Merovingian dynasty in 457, were considered the first emblem of the kings of France.[7] They represented a sign of immortality and resurrection.[8]
So it works in much the same way as the Hitler/swastika combo.
Heraldry is basically a whole system of personal symbols. Each coat of arms represents a particular individual (or a particular corporate institution, but mostly an individual). It follows that, historically, most leaders (and indeed most persons of any status) in the western world have had, and have used, personal symbols.
Occasionally, the symoblism can be blurred. Do the royal arms in the UK represent Queen Elizabeth II, or do they represent the kingdom, the monarchy, or royal authority generally? They are used for both purposes, is the answer, so traditionally British monarch have a purely personal symbol as well. Nowadays this is the royal cypher, but in the past it was a royal badge; for example Richard III used a badge showing a boar, while Henry V used a beacon.
Neither Hitler nor Obama had persona badges in this sense, I think. Hitler did use a “personal standard” which was a variant on the party flag - red background, white roundel, swastika, but the swastika was surrounded by a garland of oak leaves in gold, and there were party eagles and Wehrmacht eagles in the four corners of the banner. But as the symbolism and the full title (“Personal standard for Adolf Hitler as Leader and Chancellor of the German Nation”) suggest, the standard represented (and was used by) Hitler in his official capacity, not Hitler the man.
Similarly Obama can use the US presidential standard, but it represents him in his official capacity, and the same standard was used by his predecessors and will presumptively be used by his successors.
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