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Municipalities in Tirol (Austria)

Gemeinden in Tirol

Last modified: 2006-09-09 by marcus schmöger
Keywords: municipality: austria | tyrol | tirol |
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Tirol is divided in 279 municipalities, including 11 towns/cities (Stadtgemeinden) and 18 market-towns (Marktgemeinden). They all have their own municipal coat-of-arms, some of them of quite ancient age, most of them adopted since WW2, though.
The history of the municipal flags in Tirol is somewhat different from adjacent Bavaria or other Austrian Länder. Only the bigger towns/cities probably used flags before the 1960ies/70ies. However, more and more municipalities were granted their own coat-of-arms. Therefore the then director (1972-77) of the Tirol state archives, Eduard Widmoser, propagated the use of municipal flags, showing the coat-of-arms on a plain golden-yellow field. The next archive director (Fridolin Dörrer, 1977-88) changed the system, though, and went back to the more traditional striped flags in municipal colours. Therefore, the municipalities already having own coats-of-arms (203 out of 279) were granted municipal colours on 19 May 1981.
The remaining municipalities adopted their municipal colours together with the coat-of-arms, after 19 May 1981.
Almost all municipal flags are bicolours, only three municipalities (Lienz, Wörgl, Wattens) have three-striped flags. There are several flags having non-heraldic colour combinations, such as blue-black, blue-red, red-blue, black-red, red-black, black-green, green-red.
Marcus Schmöger, 18 September 2003

Since 1981 all municipalities got their own colours derived from the coat-of-arms. However, as far as I can tell from my own observations last weekend (5 October 2003), there is quite some mess in Tirol: Some municipalities (e.g. Ellmau and St. Johann in Tirol) actually use their official colours; others use their "old" yellow flags (e.g. Fieberbrunn and Going am Wilden Kaiser); and I have at least one case, where the municipality uses the colours red-white (reversed Land Tirol colours) with the coa (Ladis).
Marcus Schmöger, 6 October 2003

Sources:
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Fahnen Gärtner: all municipal coats-of-arms of the states Vorarlberg, Tirol, Salzburg, Oberösterreich (direkt link does not function, so click on "Nationenfahnen", then on "Österreich", then on "Gemeinden")

See also: