See subject.
Mods: my browser is killing me here.
Fixed the thread title.
Can’t help you with the homicidal nature of your browser.
It’s German.
So, that should be a clue.
What clue is that?
Heraldry frequently has heads as charges. Apart from animal heads — boars, leopards, wolves, cats etc. etc. — human heads are varied in origin and quite obviously not pejorative, since who would want something disliked as one’s permanent personal symbol ?
Cognate to Inn’s Signs: ‘The King’s Head’ is a normal British pub sign: some years ago some muslims, or more likely people professionally aggrieved on other’s behalf, started screaming about the ancient ‘Saracen’s Head’ pub sign.
Wiki has a page of different heraldry heads, including Blason Maisons which looks kinda like Athena, Cunter Wappen which looks scholastic, and *Borgnone *which could be Chinese or Hun.
It might be the same kind of image from Coat of Arms of Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, third figure in from the upper right. This could be a common depiction of some character or former soverign.
Why is there a Jew’s Head in the coat or arms of Borna, Leipzig?
From your own link:
(Emphasis added)
It’s the crest of the Messian family. The fact that it got nicknamed “Jew’s Head” does not mean it’s actually the head of a Jew.
From the Holmes family crest?
Why do you even post?
Per the site link the family crest is a “so called” Jew’s head because it *looks *like the head of male Jew of that era, not necessarily because it *is *the head of a male Jew.
A Jew’s head forms the crest of the coat of arms of Meissen (the city, not the family). A Jew’s head also appeared on the city’s coins from time to time.
I don’t know if the reason for this is known. But it may be connected with the fact that for a time in the middle ages Meissen had a large and thriving Jewish community, because the local laws created a (comparatively) liberal and welcoming environment for Jews.
Why not a Jew’s head?
I wouldn’t call Moor’s heads commemorating battles where they got trounced “pejorative”, but normally the people you trounce aren’t people you like either.
A coat-of-arms or a pub sign with, say, a Moor’s Head ( or in Hungary, where it is very frequent, a Turk’s Head ) in no way indicates hatred or dislike; more in the nature of a souvenir.
Jew’s head sounds like some kind of nasty briar seed. Then there’s the jew’s harp, which may be a corruption of jaw harp. Or maybe not, but probably nothing to do with actual Jews.
Black Bart Roberts’ flag had the heads of both a Barbadian and a Martiniquian. Not any specific Caribbean guys, just places that pissed him off. Maybe something brutal like that?
According to these two German language sites on Jewish history the device “Meißener Judenkopf” (really a half figure not a head) originated in a crest to the arms of the margraves and the city of Meissen, and denoted toleration of Jews by the margraves against a tax. The toleration in the city of Meissen itself did not endure - Meissen’s Jewish population was killed in a plague pogrom in 1349.
Note that the Moors’ Head as a heraldic motif is sometimes actually the head of St Maurice. Not always, but sometimes.
Fun fact. The current pope’s coat of arms has a Moor’s head. But generally, you find it in heraldry for one of four reasons: representing St. Maurice, as a Crusader symbol, representing a link to the Hohenstaufens (they adopted it when they ruled Sicily), or puns on names (the Moreae, the Negrini, and the Pagani all used it.)
Or, for Spain, commemorating a battle. Are you counting the Reconquista as a Crusade?