Flag of Austria

What the flag of Austria looks like

The flag of Austria has three horizontal bands of equal height: red at the top, white in the middle and red at the bottom. The proportions are 2:3. The red is a deep, slightly dark shade, close to crimson, and the white is plain.

There are two versions in practice. The civil flag is the plain triband and is the one people fly from homes, shops and at sporting events. The state flag, used by government offices and the armed forces, has the national coat of arms in the center of the white band: a black single-headed eagle wearing a gold mural crown, with a hammer and a sickle in its talons and a broken chain around each of its legs. That is why Austria is sometimes said to have two flags: the extra detail is the coat of arms, not a different design.

If you want a small version for messages or websites, see the Austria flag emoji.

Austria flag meaning and symbolism

Unlike many national flags, the Austrian flag does not have an official meaning for its colors. Red and white are the colors of the old arms of the Babenberg family, who ruled Austria from the 10th century to 1246, and they are the colors of the historic Bindenschild, a shield with a white band across a red field. The flag is a version of that shield stretched out into three stripes.

The best-known explanation is a legend. During the siege of Acre in 1191, during the Third Crusade, Duke Leopold V of Austria is said to have fought so fiercely that his white tunic was soaked in blood. When he took off his belt, a band of white remained where it had been. The duke then took the red-white-red pattern as his banner. This is a story from later centuries, and historians think the colors had already been in use as the family's arms, but it remains the most popular explanation in Austria.

On the state flag, the eagle is a symbol of the republic. The mural crown stands for the bourgeoisie, the hammer for the workers and the sickle for the farmers. The broken chains were added after 1945 to show the end of the Nazi period.

History of the Austrian flag

The red-white-red banner is documented from the early 13th century, and the Babenberg duke Frederick II is recorded using it as a banner in 1230. After the Babenbergs died out, the lands passed to the Habsburgs, who kept the arms of Austria, although their own dynasty also used black and yellow, which became the colors of the Habsburg monarchy. For centuries the black-yellow flag was the main imperial colors, and the red-white-red design stayed the arms of the duchy and its lands.

After the First World War and the fall of the monarchy, the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed in November 1918 and adopted red-white-red as its flag. The republic carried it through the First Republic. Between 1934 and 1938, under the authoritarian regime, a version with a different eagle was used as the state flag. In 1938 Austria was annexed by Germany and the flag was replaced by the flags of Nazi Germany.

The red-white-red flag was restored when Austria's independence was re-established in 1945. A law passed that year set the flag and the coat of arms with broken chains, and the Federal Constitution still names red-white-red as the colors of the republic.

Austria-Hungary flag and other old Austrian flags

The state known as Austria-Hungary (1867-1918) never had one official national flag. It was a union of two states, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, each with its own flags. Austria used black and yellow, and Hungary used red, white and green. For the shared institutions, such as the navy and the merchant fleet, a combined flag was used: Austrian red-white-red next to Hungarian red-white-green, each with its own coat of arms. This is why searches for the Austria-Hungary flag turn up several different images. During the First World War the imperial and royal armed forces flew the black-yellow banner and the war ensign.

Before 1867, the Austrian Empire (1804-67) used a black-and-yellow flag, which had been the colors of the Habsburgs since the Holy Roman Empire, and its ships used red-white-red.

Flags that look like the Austrian flag

The closest flag is that of Latvia, which is dark carmine red with a narrow white band in the middle. Latvia's white stripe is only one-fifth of the height and the ratio is 1:2, so it looks longer and thinner than Austria's. The flag of Peru is also red-white-red but it is vertical, and its state version shows the coat of arms in the middle. Canada's flag has red bands on either side of a white square with a leaf in the middle.