The Council of Bialystok has scheduled the issue of changing the coat of arms of the city for September 27.
If the deputies make a positive decision, the city authorities will entrust the design of the coat of arms to the relevant structures. Then it will be submitted to the heraldic commission for consideration. And the final decision will again be up to the deputies.
The change of the coat of arms is primarily due to historical circumstances, explains Urszula Boublej, Director of the Department of Social Communication of the Bialystok City Hall.
“The Heraldic Commission spoke on this topic, which approved the current coat of arms of the city with an Eagle and a chase, referring to the coat of arms of 1809, endowed by the tsar. Bialystok is one of the two voivodeship cities of the current Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which received its coat of arms with the approval of the Polish king. The second is Gdansk, which received its coat of arms on the instructions of King August III of Poland, who responded to the request of John Clemens Bronicki on February 1, 1749. And on that coat of arms there was a griffin with the monogram J.K.B and a crown,” she said.
The coat of arms with an Eagle and a chase was approved by the local government of Bialystok in 1996. Since then, heraldists and historians have argued that the coat of arms does not comply with the principles of heraldry and historical tradition.