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Municipalities in Vorarlberg (Austria)

Gemeinden in Vorarlberg

General background

The Austrian state Vorarlberg has 96 municipalities, 4 of them are towns/cities. The early history of the municipal coats-of-arms is similar to adjacent Austrian and German states, i.e. originally only towns and market-towns had their own arms, between WW1 and WW2 a number of municipal coats-of-arms were granted. The Gemeindegesetz of 1965 (Law on municipalities) made it obligatory to grant arms to all municipalities; this had been achieved until 31 December 1970. The book containing all the coats-of-arms is [brm75].

At least the more recent version of the Gemeindegesetz of 1985 (I do not have the earlier versions) also mentions the flag, namely in § 12: "Jede Gemeinde hat das Recht, eine Fahne (Flagge) zu führen und deren Aussehen durch Verordnung festzusetzen." (Each municipality has the right to use a flag and to establish its design by decree.)

As I learned from the Austrian heraldist Karl Palfrader, the state archives are obviously not involved in the flag adoption, so there is no material there. This means contacting each and every municipality directly.

Marcus Schmöger, 7 August 2005

Status of research

Although Vorarlberg has only 96 municipalities, their research is a slow and very tedious task. This is due to three factors:

they are not centrally regulated, i.e. there is no involvement of the State Archives;
they are less frequently used, and thus photographs are not as frequently found on the WWW;
the municipalities themselves are not overly fast and careful in answering my e-mails.

However, the current status is not too bad. Out of 96 municipalities I have

sent information and drawings, in most cases based on flag photos, of 50 (52%);
sent preliminary information without drawings, of 4 (4%);
sent information that they do not have a flag, of 16 (17%);
do not have any information at all about the flag, not even if they have one or not, of 26 (27%).

Marcus Schmöger, 6 November 2007

See also: