Germania is the name of a painting that was probably created in March 1848. It hung in the St. Paul's Church (Paulskirche) in Frankfurt, Germany. At that time, first the so-called Pre-Parliament and then the Frankfurt National Assembly, the first all-German parliament, met there. The National Assembly was a popular motif of the time, so the Germania painting also became very well-known. After the National Assembly was violently terminated in May 1849, the painting was taken down. In 1867 it was moved to the German National Museum in Nuremberg.
Frankfurt Parliament meeting in the Paulskirche decorated with the painting in 1848–49 (coloured, contemporary engraving). The yellow color on the flag is of contemporary imagination.
''Germania'' by Philipp Veit, 1836
The original, present-day exhibition in Nuremberg
Germania is the personification of the German nation or the Germans as a whole. Like many other national personification symbols, she appeared first during the Roman Era. During the Medieval era, she was usually portrayed as one of the lands or provinces ruled by the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, and not as the most prominent but in a subordinate position to imperial power and other provinces. Around 1500, together with the birth of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Emperor Maximilian I and his humanists reinvented her as Mother of the Nation.
Germania sitting on a shield, with a broken spear, Domitian's aureus, 89
Germania in the guise of Minerva, denarius of Hadrian, 134