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Municipalities in Burgenland (Austria)

Gemeinden in Burgenland

General background

The Austrian state Burgenland contains 171 municipalities. The use of coats-of-arms is similar to adjacent Austrian states, although Burgenland as a rural and rather poor part of Austria is somewhat lagging behind in municipal heraldry (compared to e.g. Tyrol, Salzburg or Vorarlberg).
Regarding municipal colours, only in 1987 the respective paragraph (§4) of the Gemeindeordnung (Law on municipalities) was amended with the following sentences:
"Die Gemeinde ist zur Führung von Gemeindefarben befugt, deren Festsetzung dem Gemeinderat obliegt. Die Festsetzung bedarf der Genehmigung der Landesregierung. Die Genehmigung darf nur aus öffentlichen Rücksichten in Beziehung auf den Symbolgehalt der Farben versagt werden." (The municipality is entitled to the use of municipal colours, whose establishment is the duty of the municipal council. The establishment needs approval by the state government. The approval may only be refused for public considerations regarding the symbolic content of the colours.)

Colours of towns/cities

The Österreichische Städtebuch Burgenland [dea96] describes not only the coats-of-arms of the towns, but also the town colours, that are derived from the respective arms. How these are actually used and since when, is not described in the book. Most probably the flags would be similar to other Austrian municipal flags, i.e. vertical flags (hanging flag, "Banner" or "Knatterflagge") striped in the colours, and showing the coat-of-arms.

Eisenstadt: White-Red (since 1926)
Frauenkirchen: White-Red
Güssing: Yellow-Blue
Jennersdorf: Red-Yellow-Green
Mattersburg: no colours described
Neusiedl am See: Green-White (since 1926); before that Red-White (I doubt the existence of town colours before 1926)
Oberpullendorf: Red-Yellow
Oberwart: no colours described
Pinkafeld: White-Blue
Rust: Green-Yellow
Stadtschlaining: no colours described

There is another book containing several municipal colours, namely the book about the symbols of the Croatian-inhabitad municipalities in Burgenland [prp97]. However, the authors are a bit lazy, as they frequently do not mention the order of the colours properly.

Antau: yellow-red
Baumgarten: red-green
Kaisersdorf: red-yellow
Klingenbach: this should not be striped, but quarterly of red and yellow (to distinguish it from the Burgenland state colours)
Rotenturm: red-yellow
Siegendorf: red-yellow
Sigleß: red-yellow (or yellow-red ?)
Zagersdorf: red-yellow-green

Photos of municipal flags on the WWW

I am currently in the process of searching photos of Burgenland municipal flags on the WWW. Although I have already found several, I am far from having checked all the list of 171 municipalities.

Marcus Schmöger, 10 August 2005

See also: