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Austrian Cities and Municipalities

Österreich: Städte und Gemeinden

Austria consists of 2359 municipalities (including cities, towns and market-towns), 2346 of which are members of the Österreichischer Gemeindebund (Austrian Association of Municipalities).
A list of all Austrian municipalities can be found at the website of "Statistik Austria".

The usual form of the municipal flag is a hanging flag, striped in the main (two or three) colours of the coat-of-arms, frequently with the coat-of-arms slightly upset to the top. This is very similar to the practice followed in Southern Germany.

As in Germany, most people think that their municipal flags are of ancient origin, for instance: "All municipal flags in Austria are very old, so we do not need to create any new flags." Thomas Schulreich, cited in Quo vadimus by Peter Orenski [ore01a]/[ore03]

Although municipal coats-of-arms are in many cases quite old in Austria, many of the coats-of-arms of smaller municipalities are of more recent origin. Municipal flags as a whole are probably not so old, as only recently (the last 50 or so years) most municipalities have started using their own flags.

Typical for the municipal flag usage in whole Austria is probably the following text about municipal flags in Tirol, from the Landesarchiv Tirol (Tyrol State Archives) (translation into English by Marcus Schmöger):

"The use of a municipal flag has taken roots in Tyrol only late. Until the 60ies of the 20th century only in very rare cases the flag colours of the municipalities with own coats-of-arms had been officially laid down. In the 70ies