Braunschwarze

Braunschwarze is a German color designation meaning brown-black. The term is historical and regional, used primarily in German-speaking areas to describe animals with a coat that is predominantly dark, often with brownish shading rather than pure black. The name is derived from Braunschweig (Brunswick) in Lower Saxony, where such color descriptors appeared in early breed registries and stud books.

In practice, braunschwarze has been applied to various species, most notably horses and cattle. In horses, the term sometimes corresponds to a dark bay or a black with brown tints, rather than a pure black coat; the exact phenotype can vary by breed and era, and color naming tended to be inconsistent in older sources. In cattle, braunschwarze was used to describe a dark coat within heterogeneous color groups, often contrasted with purely black or chestnut individuals.

Today, braunschwarze is rarely used in formal breed standards and is generally considered historical or descriptive rather than taxonomic. Modern color nomenclature tends to use standardized terms such as black, bay, brown, or, in cattle, breed-specific color names. The term remains of interest to historians, veterinarians, and genealogists studying regional breed descriptions and old registries, as well as to those examining the linguistic development of coat-color terminology in the German-speaking world. See also coat color terminology, German color descriptors, and Braunschweig region studies.