Last modified: 2019-03-30 by rob raeside
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 vanished toward the end of the XVIII C. This would imply
that the Landesfarben go back to the 1700's, but this seems to be
very unlikely. Many of the Landesfarben come from the main
colours of the arms and the colours for Gradisca are correct (white-blue-yellow);
it may be Pasch extrapolated to the past the colour adoption
process?! Trying to resolve this problem I wrote to many people (L.
Philippe, G. Mattern, J. Tenora, among the others) and to
Austrian museums, but nobody could tell me any more.
Mario Fabretto, 10 September 1996
Here are the Austrohungarian Landesfarben as published in Rosenfeld's book. All are horizontal bi or tricolours; the first colour is that of the uppermost stripe.
| Böhmen | red-white | Görz und Gradisca | white-red | |
| Niederösterreich | blue-yellow | Slavonien | blue-white-green | |
| Bukowina | blue-red | Istrien | yellow-red-blue | |
| Oberösterreich | white-red | Steiermark | green-white | |
| Croatien | red-white-blue | Kärnten | red-white | |
| Salzburg | red-white | Triest | red-white-red | |
| Dalmatien | blue-yellow | Krain | white-blue-red | |
| Schlesien | yellow-black | Tirol | white-red | |
| Galizien | blue-red | Mähren | yellow-red | |
| Siebenbürgen | blue-red-yellow | Vorarlberg | red-white |
Source: Die See-Flaggen, National und Provincial-Fahnen sowie Cocarden aller Laender nach offiziellen Quellen zusammengestellt und bearbeitet von F. Heyer v. Rosenfeld. Wien 1883 [hvr83]
Other sources report colours for Bosnia and Herzegovina:
following Crampton Flags of the World, these were blue-white-red;
Aldo Ziggioto says that the order was blue-red-white (I also
found this order in an Austrian book I don't remember the title;
but this was not a flag book.)
Mario Fabretto, 16 September 1996
It is very difficult to say which flags (Landesfarben) were
used each time. Coats of arms can help us with some hints but one
cannot get to absolute conclusions. Unlike Swiss colours and
symbols, which served to distinguish different territory and
towns on battlefields, I think Austrian Landesfarben come most
likely from the bureaucratic inclination of that government
combined with people's love for decorations. So the colours used on
documents regarding each separate province gradually became the
colours people used to identify their land, mainly in the form of
long vertical displayed banners. It is even proof that every Kronland had used its colours in the form of flags and not only
as vertical banner. Recently some examples have been reported of
flags corresponding to the Landesfarben with the coat of arms in
the middle. These flags should have been used for ceremonial
purposes (because people and even local governments were not
allowed free use of such kinds of local identity symbols,
appearing as a menace to State unity) but it would be
extremely interesting to study the process that brought
ceremonial flags to change from pure heraldic flags of the ruling
family to flags combining popular colours with official symbols.
I feel that this could only be understood studying the evolution
of flags in parallel with social evolution. The transition from the feudal medieval State
to the modern concept of nationality and nations inside the
Austrian Empire would act as a "laboratory" to
study, through the evolution of State and popular symbols,
complex social and political dynamics.
Mario Fabretto 23 November 1997
Other Austro-Hungarian Empire flags with arms are the so called
Coronation flags. I have seen several on exhibition in Zagreb. I
remember two from the early 1800's (or late 1700's), from two
different coronations. Both of them follow the same pattern: a
single-coloured flag with a swallow-tail, bordered with gold and
with the name of the kingdom in question in golden letters above
the coat of arms. One of the two is green with checkered arms for
Croatia, and the other is white with arms showing two rivers, a
marten and a star for Slavonia. There was also a reproduction of a woodcut with
a scene from the coronation in which such coronation flags were very visible.
New flags would be made in each country for each coronation, and carried to the coronation
place together with other regalia of each kingdom. Those who
carried the coronation flags were the most noble and honoured men
of the kingdom at the time.
Željko Heimer
