I was curious to know whether they contain in their emblems dates of important historical event. My search was motivated entirely aesthetically – I only cared about the appearance of dates in the emblems and not about who was more right, “us” or “them.” My superficial curiosity sucked me into the issue more than I had planned, while the questions only multiplied.

I started the research with emblems of old European cities like Venice, Dubrovnik, Rome, Istanbul and Thessaloniki. These simply seemed to fit my research best since, throughout history, Prizren has been largely influenced by these cities and they surely have many common stories. After I didn’t find traces of years in their respective emblems, I began reading a bit of history and stories about these cities. I was hoping I would find some date or a similar event from this period that had an influence in the formation of their national states – same kind of influence like the League of Prizren had on the national revival of the Albanian people. As a poor connoisseur of history, and especially after the Renaissance period of these nations, I didn’t find a thing. Neither years for the sake of years, nor years in the emblem.

I started thinking if I knew of any other similar event somewhere else, anywhere in the world, in some city where an assembly was held that created a nation. The closest example I could think of was Frankfurt in Germany. A friend from childhood lives there and years ago, during a visit, he told me about the famous Frankfurt church where the assembly that brought the German people together into one nation was held. The analogy with Frankfurt seemed phenomenal: here the assembly was held at the Mosque of Bajrakli – over there in the St. Paul church; here the Muslims were brought together with the Christians – over there the Catholics with the Protestants; Albanian Renaissance period – German Renaissance period; we have vineyards around the city – they too have vineyards. I don’t know what importance does the assembly in the church of St. Paul have for the German people, but the year is not present in the emblem of this city. All I found was only one emblem with this year in it. It was the sign and the name of the football club Bohum 1848, where the year stands as its founding date.

I spent an entire night going through all of Europe, searching for the emblem with a year in it and I didn’t find any comparative model. The only cases where a year is present in the emblem are some emblems of eastern towns and from the communist era, where the date appears as the day of liberation from fascist occupation.

The next day, the curiosity about emblems took me to America. The dominating emblem of cities of America is a year. In most of them a year is present. In Los Angeles’ emblem it is the year 1871, in New York’s 1625, in Seattle’s 1869, in Washington’s 1871 and in Miami’s 1896. In contrast to the year in Prizren’s emblem, the year in them represents the time of establishment of these cities. Before the year it says Established. American cities, just like companies, record the date of their establishment as entities.

From what I learned from this virtual journey around the world, it is not a custom for a city’s emblem to have a year in it. I presume, perhaps, that cities from the rest of the world, because of their age, cannot remember the date of their establishment, but what about important events such as the “League” in Prizren?

Surely, most of the cities I visited have at least one event of this magnitude! There could be two things – they either have more of them so they didn’t know which one to chose, or they show their identity not with numbers but with something more sophisticated that we still haven’t understood.

Why did we put numbers in the emblem of the city when there is no similar case anywhere in the world? There should me a very strong reason for the year in our emblem to be an aesthetic exception in the world of emblems.

Now I have a question for you dear reader: do you think we will keep the pain of losing the year in Prizren’s emblem in spite of “them,” or do “we” really need it for something specific. Prizren 1878, what do you say?

The article was originally written in Albanian.
Photo Credit: Rina Meta
Illustration: Pranvera Jagxhiu Paqarizi & Jeton Jagxhiu

 The views, opinions and comments published on this BLOG are not necessarily those of the Kosovo 2.0 editorial staff. Also, the website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted on the blog stories. All comments that incite and encourage hate speech or discrimination will be moderated.