Last modified: 2003-09-06 by marcus schmöger
Keywords: landesfarben | coronation flag | livery colours | austro-hungarian empire |
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It seems that most of the 'provinces' of the former Austrohungarian Empire had several simple bi- or tri-colours through the 19th century. Usually you can find texts reporting the so called "Landesfarben", which we could translate as "colours", and the most important I know is the one of E. von Rosenfeld, circa 1885. In it you can also find colours for the German and Prussian Länder. For Austrian Länder I have asked many vexillologists about the origins and the use of Landesfärben, but the subject seems to be very mysterious. All agree that the Austrian Empire allowed people to use colours only, especially in a vertical format, but not to fly true "national or State flags", even in local governments. No one could confirm the existence of flags for the Länder with the arms on them (although nowadays in Austria you can see Länder flags with arms, but times have changed a lot and it has become more common also in many other countries to see people displaying the state flag, instead of the national flag)
Concerning Austrian Landesfarben, they are a very complicated. In a paper in 1976 E. Pasch inserted (among a list of horizontal tricolour flags) a flag for the County of Gradisca, a county which v