Cities and Municipalities (Germany)

Städte und Gemeinden

Last modified: 2005-09-24 by santiago dotor
Keywords: germany | subnational | stadt | city | gemeinde | municipality |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors

• Introduction to Municipal Flags
• Cities and Municipalities (Städte und Gemeinden)

See also:

• Introduction to Civic Flags (Germany)
• Subnational Flags (Germany)
• Germany

Other sites:

• Meine Stadt (links to 300,000 websites from 14,000 towns and municipalities)
• FlagDataBank Website:
  • German City Flags, an article by Gunnar Staack from FlagDataBank no.10
  • Chart of German civic flags, a thumbnail online version of Staack 1997
  • Flags of German cities
• Photos of German municipal flags, mostly from Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, at Stefan Schwoon's website

German city flags can be:

• 'normal' flags, proportions 3:5, horizontally striped with the coat-of-arms either in the middle of the flag, or in the canton;
• banners with proportions ca. 3:1 with:
  • the coat-of-arms in the middle of the flag, or in 1/3 of the height of the flag, on top;
  • the coat-of-arms on top of the flag in a white or coloured square;
• banners-of-arms, which is rare and it more used in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania than elsewhere;
• other flags: with more stripes in the colours of the cities, diagonal stripes, plain flags with the coat-of-arms, etc.

Some examples of city flags can be found on the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Flaggenkunde website:

• The city of Trier has a yellow and red banner with the coat-of-arms in the middle.
• The city of Saarbrücken has a (sky) blue over white horizontal flag 3:5 with the coat-of-arms in the middle.
• The city of München [Munich] has a yellow over black flag and banner, and a lozenges yellow and black flag or banner.
• The city of Mainz has a banner-of-arms.

Pascal Vagnat, 8 August 1999

I have tried to make images of those cities which are kreisfrei i.e. not belonging to any county. My main source is Staack 1997, a flag chart published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Flaggenkunde [a reduced image of] which is available online here. This has been my source of information unless when mentioned otherwise. Also, if there are coats of arms on the flags the source for my images is Stadler 1964-1971 unless otherwise mentioned.

Ste