Country
The red-white-red of Austria goes back to the Bindenschild of the Babenbergs, traced with certainty from a seal of 1230; under the Habsburgs it became the arms of Austria, while the black and gold of the dynasty served as the civil flag of the Austrian Empire and later of the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary until 1918. The Republic took up red-white-red in 1918 and the single-headed eagle in 1919, restored in 1945 with a broken chain.
Flag
Not available
Coat of Arms
Not available
| Flag | Three horizontal stripes of equal width: red, white, red |
|---|---|
| Colours | Red-white-red (Article 8a of the Federal Constitutional Law, 1981) |
| Earliest evidence | Seal of the Bindenschild on a charter of 30 November 1230 |
| Arms | Single-headed black eagle with the Bindenschild, mural crown, sickle, hammer and broken chain |
| Arms law | Wappengesetz of 28 March 1984 |
| Red | Pantone 186 C, set for the armed forces on 14 May 2018 |
The red-white-red of Austria comes from the Bindenschild, the arms of the Babenbergs, traced with certainty from 1230. Under the Habsburgs it was the colour of the land of Austria and, from 1786, of the navy, while the civil flag was the black and gold of the dynasty; the Republic took up red-white-red in 1918. These are the stages of the flag from the 14th century.
Click the thumbnails to go through the flags.
14th c.
Three horizontal stripes of red, white and red, the colours of the Bindenschild.
According to German Wikipedia, the flags of Austria derive from the red-white-red shield of Austria, the Bindenschild, of the early 13th century. A red-white-red flag is found from the 14th century, more rarely as a field sign, where it gave way to the black and gold imperial banners of the Holy Roman Empire, than at ceremonies and festive occasions. After 1270 the Habsburg dukes, enfeoffed with the lands of the Babenbergs, used the colours as their house arms, and from the 15th century they became the arms of Austria. English Wikipedia notes that, unlike the black and yellow banner of the Habsburgs, the red-white-red flag was associated from very early on not with a reigning family but with the country itself.
1786
The red-white-red colours, augmented with a shield of similar colours, according to English Wikipedia.
According to German Wikipedia, the Austrian navy was founded in 1786 and in the same year red-white-red was made the war ensign of Austria, while the official civil flag of Austria, and later of the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary, was black and yellow. English Wikipedia dates the naval ensign to the reign of Joseph II. Wikimedia Commons describes the image as the merchant ensign from 1786 to 1869 and the naval and war ensign from 1786 to 1915 de jure, and de facto until 1918. English Wikipedia adds that the new ensigns created in 1915 were not brought into use because of the war.
1804
A horizontal bicolour of black and yellow, according to English Wikipedia.
Black and gold were the colours of the Imperial House of Habsburg as Holy Roman Emperors, from the mid-15th century to the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, derived from the banner of the Empire, a black double-headed eagle on gold. According to English Wikipedia a simpler form with black and gold bars appeared in the 18th century, and with the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the flag was approved as a civil flag. German Wikipedia notes that a unified state with a centrally coordinated government and central emblems for all the lands came into being only with the founding of the Austrian Empire in 1804. The black and gold flag was used much like a modern national flag by the Austrian Empire and by the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary, and sometimes informally for the whole empire, until 1918.
1869
Civil and merchant marine ensign of Austria-Hungary, 1869 to 1918, according to Wikimedia Commons.
According to English Wikipedia, Austria-Hungary (1867–1918) did not have a commonly used universal flag: a single national flag could not exist, since the Dual Monarchy consisted of two nations brought together by the Compromise of 1867, and the only official symbol of Austria-Hungary in common use was the coat of arms. At state functions the black-gold flag of Austria and the red-white-green tricolour of Hungary were often used to represent the two parts of the empire. The merchant navy used a red-white-red civil ensign until 1869, when a new “double” civil ensign was introduced, its lower stripe divided between a red left half and a green right half, with the Austrian and Hungarian coats of arms side by side. It was also used as the consular flag, as decreed on 18 February 1869, and came into use on 1 August 1869.
1918
Three horizontal stripes of equal width, the middle one white, the upper and lower ones red.
On 31 October 1918 the State Council decided on red-white-red as the colours of the new Republic. According to German Wikipedia, the Social Democrats under Karl Renner had argued for the “revolutionary” black, red and gold, while the Christian Socials under Wilhelm Miklas saw in the “venerable Babenberg and crusader colours” a sign of continuity. When the Republic was proclaimed before the Parliament in Wien on 12 November 1918, red-white-red flags were to be raised, but radical members of the “Red Guard” tore out the white stripes and hoisted the red remains. In 1919 the new Republic adopted the red-white-red war and naval ensign of the k.u.k. navy as the Austrian state flag. Under the Federal State of 1934 to 1938 the colours remained red-white-red; a federal law of 28 December 1936 placed the flag of the Fatherland Front, with the Kruckenkreuz, on a par with the state flag within the country, beside it.
After the Anschluss of 1938 the use of all national insignia was forbidden, according to German Wikipedia. English Wikipedia dates the formal adoption of the flag to 1 May 1945; according to German Wikipedia, this is the date of the law on the arms, colours, seal and emblems of the Republic. Since a constitutional law of 1 July 1981, Article 8a of the Federal Constitutional Law reads: “Die Farben der Republik Österreich sind rot-weiß-rot. Die Flagge besteht aus drei gleichbreiten waagrechten Streifen, von denen der mittlere weiß, der obere und der untere rot sind”: the colours of the Republic of Austria are red-white-red, and the flag consists of three horizontal stripes of equal width, the middle one white, the upper and lower ones red. German Wikipedia counts it among the oldest state symbols still in force in the world.
The arms of Austria began as the Bindenschild of the Babenbergs, became the arms of the Habsburg hereditary lands, and were set on the breast of the imperial double-headed eagle. In 1919 the Republic replaced Renner’s tower emblem of 1918 with a single-headed eagle carrying the symbols of the three estates; the Federal State brought back a double eagle from 1934 to 1938, and in 1945 the eagle of 1919 returned with a broken chain. These are the stages of the arms from 1230.
Click the thumbnails to go through the coats of arms.
1230
Gules, a fess Argent.
According to German Wikipedia, the Bindenschild, the red-white-red arms of the Babenbergs, can be traced with certainty from 1230. The earliest source is a wax seal on a charter of 30 November 1230 confirming the privileges of Lilienfeld Abbey, damaged and without colours; the colours are confirmed by reports of Friedrich II’s knighting in red-white-red festive dress in the Schottenkloster in Wien on 2 February 1232. Its origin is unclear. The best-known legend has the white garment of Leopold V soaked in blood at the siege of Acre in 1191, except for a white band where he wore his sword belt; it is found in a charter of about 1260, but German Wikipedia says these old sources are now considered not very credible. The thesis it gives as the current state of research, that of the historian Hermann Wiesflecker, traces the Bindenschild to the red-white-red fief banner of the Eppensteiner, which passed through the Traungauer and the Otakare to the Babenbergs in 1192. The older family arms of the Austrian Babenbergs showed two black lions on gold. The image is a drawing of the Bindenschild of Margrave Leopold III after a late 13th-century painting in the fountain house of Heiligenkreuz Abbey, according to Wikimedia Commons; German Wikipedia dates the window to about 1290 and calls it a later, already Habsburg attribution.
1512
The Bindenschild under the archducal hat.
After the Babenbergs died out in 1246, Ottokar II Přemysl, duke of Austria from 1251, showed the Bindenschild on his seal. When the Habsburgs became dukes of Austria in 1282 they took over the red-white-red arms of the land, which over the following years became the arms of the dynasty itself; King Friedrich der Schöne placed the Bindenschild on the breast of the imperial eagle as early as 1325. For unknown reasons, from the 15th century the older arms with five eagles, the Lerchenwappen, were called “Old Austria” and the Bindenschild “New Austria”; the Bindenschild displaced the eagles and became the first common arms of the Habsburg hereditary lands. The image follows the title page of the copy of the Privilegium maius made for Maximilian I in 1512, according to Wikimedia Commons.
1804
The double-headed eagle with the arms of Habsburg-Lorraine on its breast, surrounded by the Order of the Golden Fleece, its wings adorned with ten important lands, under the Imperial Crown of Austria, according to German Wikipedia.
The double-headed eagle became the heraldic animal of the Roman-German king and emperor under Sigismund in 1433, and the House of Austria soon held the imperial dignity permanently. The last Holy Roman Emperor, Franz II, used a modified version of the quaternion eagle for the Austrian Empire newly founded in 1804. After the founding of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine in 1740 the house arms had been redesigned, with the Bindenschild in the centre between the lion of Habsburg and the eagles of Lorraine. The Austrian double-headed eagle also became the arms of the real union of Austria-Hungary, the emblem of its common (k. u. k.) institutions from 1867 to 1915. The image is the version of 1815 to 1866, according to Wikimedia Commons.
1915
The double-headed eagle on a golden shield, with the red-white-red Bindenschild on its breast.
On 10 October 1915 the arms of Austria-Hungary were replaced by a new common medium and a common small coat of arms, combining the arms of the two halves of the monarchy and of the ruling house, with the motto INDIVISIBILITER AC INSEPARABILITER, “indivisible and inseparable”. According to German Wikipedia, the golden shield with the double-headed eagle now stood only for Austria, under the Imperial Crown of Austria, and the Hungarian arms under the Crown of Saint Stephen. The arms of Habsburg-Lorraine on the eagle’s breast were simplified to the red-white-red Bindenschild of the Babenbergs, reintroduced in 1915. German Wikipedia captions the image as the small arms of the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrat, 1915 to 1918.
1918
A city tower of black ashlars, crossed red hammers and a golden wreath of ears of corn.
On 31 October 1918 the State Council adopted, with the colours, a new state emblem worked out personally by the State Chancellor Karl Renner, drawn up in haste for the seal needed in the peace negotiations after the First World War. Its black, red and gold were deliberately chosen after the German colours, and its symbols stood for the three estates: the tower for the bourgeoisie, the hammers for the workers, the wreath for the peasants. Heavily criticised, among others by Adolf Loos and by heraldists, as more like a company logo than a state emblem, it was withdrawn, and a decision of the council of ministers of 8 May 1919 replaced it with the eagle. The image is a reconstruction, according to Wikimedia Commons.
1919
The arms of today without the broken chains, according to English Wikipedia.
The law of 8 May 1919 on the state arms and the state seal of the Republic of German-Austria introduced the single-headed eagle with the red-white-red Bindenschild on its breast, in a drawing by the heraldic painter Ernst Krahl. The explanatory memorandum of the Constituent National Assembly called the idea that the eagle was a monarchical sign “a prejudice”: the eagle had been the symbol of the legions of the Roman Republic, it expressed the sovereignty of the state, and the United States, Mexico and Poland also used it. The Bindenschild, it said, was not the shield of the ruling house but the sign of the land of Austria. The eagle carries three emblems for the three main estates: the mural crown for the bourgeoisie, the sickle for the peasants, the hammer for the workers. German Wikipedia notes that the arms are also read as a modified version of the Habsburg double-headed eagle.
1934
A free-floating, double-headed, black eagle, nimbed and armed in gold, langued red, whose breast bears a red shield crossed by a silver fess (Article 3 of the Constitution of 1934).
After the elimination of Parliament and of the Constitutional Court by the government of Engelbert Dollfuß, the Republic was replaced in 1934 by the Austrofascist “Federal State of Austria”, according to German Wikipedia. According to German Wikipedia, the regime wanted to remove from the arms anything that recalled communism or socialism: the hammer, the sickle and the mural crown disappeared. On 24 March 1934 the heraldic painter Carl Ernst Krahl, son of Ernst Krahl, was commissioned with the design, and the image of the new arms was published on 2 July 1934. An official civics text called the double eagle “the old imperial eagle that for centuries was the heraldic animal of Austria”. The Kruckenkreuz, a semi-official symbol since the 1920s, was treated as an official symbol but was never part of the arms. After the Anschluss of 1938 the use of all national insignia was forbidden.
1945
The eagle of 1919, its two talons enclosed by a broken iron chain.
The Provisional State Government, again under Karl Renner, decided immediately after the liberation to restore the arms of the First Republic. The Wappengesetz of 1 May 1945 added a broken iron chain enclosing the eagle’s talons, “in memory of the regaining of Austria’s independence and the rebuilding of the state in 1945”, and described the hammer, sickle and mural crown as the cooperation of the workers, peasants and bourgeoisie; the drawing followed on 20 June 1945. According to Peter Diem, as reported by German Wikipedia, the arms were formally unconstitutional for decades, since those of the First Republic had had constitutional rank and the new ones were adopted by a simple law. The image is a version with a black eagle by Peter Diem and the web team of the Austrian Ministry of Defence, according to Wikimedia Commons.
1984
A free-floating, single-headed, black eagle, armed in gold and langued red, whose breast bears a red shield crossed by a silver fess; on its head a golden mural crown with three visible merlons; a broken iron chain encloses its two talons; in the right talon a golden sickle with the edge turned inwards, in the left a golden hammer (Article 8a of the Federal Constitutional Law).
The constitutional reform of 1 July 1981 wrote the blazon into Article 8a of the Federal Constitutional Law and repealed the laws of 1919 and 1945, leaving the Republic for almost three years without a legally published drawing, until the Wappengesetz of 28 March 1984, whose Annex 1 shows the arms in colour. In that drawing the eagle’s plumage is detailed and grey, the talons, sickle, hammer and mural crown gold, the chain blue-grey; another version, which Peter Diem considered the only correct one, follows the blazon with a plain black eagle. German Wikipedia calls the result a case unique in the world: two arms, an “artistic grey” and a “heraldic black” one, are in use, and two federal service flags. Wikimedia Commons describes the image as the official version of the Wappengesetz of 1984, Annex 1.
Since the constitutional law of 1 July 1981, Article 8a of the Federal Constitutional Law fixes the colours, the flag and the blazon of the arms. The Wappengesetz of 28 March 1984 introduced the federal arms (Annex 1), the seal of the Republic and the flags of the Republic, among them the federal service flag (Annex 2), in their current versions; the provisions of the law on maritime navigation on the flag at sea are not affected.
Unlike the flag at sea and the service flag, the ordinary national flag has no proportions fixed by law, though 2:3 has become usual. In Austria vertical flags are far more widespread, so that red-white-red is seen much more often side by side than one above the other. The exact shades are not fixed by law either: only for the armed forces does a decree of 14 May 2018 set the red at Pantone 186 C. English Wikipedia notes that a directive of 31 January 2000 had specified Pantone 032 C.
The service flag shows the federal arms in the centre, reaching evenly into both red stripes, in the proportions 2:3. It is not the national flag, which is only red-white-red without the arms. It is reserved to the supreme organs of the state, the governors of the Länder as organs of the indirect federal administration, the federal authorities and offices, the Austrian Federal Forests, the armed forces and the universities; since the end of the k.u.k. army in 1918 Austria has had no separate war flag, and the service flag is used as the military flag.
The flag at sea, flown by merchant ships and other privately owned ships, consists of three horizontal stripes of equal width, white between red, in the proportions 2:3. Under the law on maritime navigation it may be flown only by Austrian seagoing ships, which may not fly the flag of another state, and other indications of Austrian nationality, such as red-white-red pennants, are not allowed.
Under section 7 of the Wappengesetz anyone may use images of the federal arms and of the flag, and the flag itself, as long as this is not likely to suggest a public authorisation or to harm the reputation of the Republic. Disparaging in a hateful manner a flag of the Republic or of one of its Länder shown on a public occasion or at a publicly accessible event, or a state emblem put up by an Austrian authority, is punishable under section 248(2) of the Criminal Code.
Each of the nine Austrian Länder has its own page in the atlas.
From the Bindenschild, the red-white-red arms of the Babenbergs, traced with certainty from a seal of 30 November 1230. The best-known legend, that Leopold V’s white garment was soaked in blood at the siege of Acre in 1191 except under his sword belt, is found from about 1260, but German Wikipedia considers these old sources not very credible; the thesis of the historian Hermann Wiesflecker traces the colours to the fief banner of the Eppensteiner, inherited by the Babenbergs in 1192.
English Wikipedia considers it one of the oldest national symbols still in use by a modern country, with its first recorded use in 1230, and German Wikipedia counts it among the oldest state symbols still in force in the world. Under the monarchy, however, the official civil flag was the black and yellow of the Habsburgs; the red-white-red flag became the state flag of the Republic in 1919.
According to German Wikipedia, the eagle stands for the sovereignty of Austria (introduced in 1919), the Bindenschild for Austria (high medieval, reintroduced in 1915), the mural crown for the bourgeoisie, the sickle for the peasants and the hammer for the workers (all introduced in 1919), and the broken iron chain for the regaining of Austria’s independence and the rebuilding of the state in 1945.
No. German Wikipedia notes that they have often been criticised because they could be read as the communist hammer and sickle, but in the communist symbol the hammer and sickle are crossed, while in the Austrian arms the mural crown, sickle and hammer form a group of three standing for the main estates of society, the bourgeoisie, the peasants and the workers. They were introduced in 1919, and English Wikipedia adds that surveys confirm that the actual symbolism of the arms is widely understood.
The broken iron chain was added by the Wappengesetz of 1 May 1945, “in memory of the regaining of Austria’s independence and the rebuilding of the state in 1945”, when the arms of the First Republic were restored. The arms of 1919 had no chain.
No. The flag with the federal arms is the federal service flag, which German Wikipedia says is, contrary to a widespread assumption, not the national flag: that is only red-white-red, without the arms. The service flag may be flown only by the supreme organs of the state, the federal authorities, the army, the universities and certain other bodies, while anyone may use the national flag and images of the arms and the flag, as long as this does not suggest a public authorisation or harm the reputation of the Republic.
Illustrations: Wikimedia Commons. Arms of 1804 and 1915 by Sodacan (CC BY-SA 3.0); arms of 1934 by David Liuzzo (CC BY-SA 3.0); other illustrations in the public domain.
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on 25 October 2026.
