Brown is a rare colour. In non-German heraldry, it is also known as 'tanné' or 'tenné'.
Brown is quite rare in heraldry, particularly as a base colour. It appears more frequently as a so-called 'natural colour', meaning that certain heraldic figures – such as a tree, a boar or a marten – are depicted in their natural colour, in this case brown. However, it is rarely used as a base colour for shading areas in coats of arms, or as a livery colour.
It is therefore rarely found on flags. The only country to have brown in its flag was the Transkei. Leather brown must also be considered a variant of brown; it plays, or has played, an important role in the flags of Delaware, New York and New Jersey, for example.
In black-and-white depictions of coats of arms or three-dimensional representations of coats of arms carved in stone, brown is depicted as a combination of red and green, that is, fine right vertical lines and fine diagonal lines. Brown is associated with the dragon’s head and the hyacinth gemstone.
In colour psychology, brown is said to have a particular effect. It dampens the mood and induces melancholy, but is also associated with solidity, stability, cosiness, poverty and unattractiveness.
Of course, brown is also a political colour. It is regarded as the colour of National Socialism because of the brown uniforms. In reality, it was red that dominated the National Socialists’ colour scheme.
