Last modified: 2003-08-09 by santiago dotor
Keywords: bavaria | bayern | county | landkreis | kreis | law |
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The approximately 120 drawings of flags of Bavarian counties are based on data gathered by Erich Dieter Linder and Falko Schmidt who got the information from the Bavarian State Archives and from enquiries to the counties. Both have written Linder and Schmidt 2000, an article about Bavarian county flags in Der Flaggenkurier no. 12, and Dieter Linder has given a presentation about them at the meeting of German vexillologists a PowerPoint file containing his presentation is available online.
Prior to the municipal reorganisation in the early seventies, Bavaria had 143 counties and 51 independent cities. Of these counties, all but three (Illertissen, Laufen, Rothenburg) had arms, and 75 had flags. The reform reduced their number to 71 counties and 25 cities. Of the new counties, all have arms and all but one (Lindau) use flags, six of them unofficially.
The coats of arms in the flags are all taken from Ralf Hartemink's International Civic Arms website and come from Stadler 1964-1972 and Linder and Olzog 1996.
Stefan Schwoon, 9 July 2001
Bavarian flags are regulated almost as strictly as those in Baden-Württemberg. Flags may consist of two or three stripes of equal width, with or without the arms. If neighbouring counties use the same colours, the arms must be used. The only exception from the stripe rule is that banner [hanging] flags may have the arms placed in a white square on the top.
Stefan Schwoon, 9 February 2001
Counties are entitled to use flags, but they must consult the Bavarian State Archives (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv). The guidelines of the Archives are as follows:
One can argue that this leads to flags that may not actually exist in the form in which I drew them. A survey of the actual flag specimens would make a useful addition to this work indeed. On the other hand one can argue that each flag which is in accordance with the grant is a valid flag for the county in question, and that the variants which are in use may change without notice anyway. Moreover, the 'default options' ought to be correct or nearly correct for the majority of flags.
A similar proviso applies to some counties where the grant specifies that the arms be 'in the head' of the flag. When drawing the flags, I took this to mean the 'arms-in-white-square' variant; however, this is not assured, even if I do not know why the grant should make special mention of this otherwise. Fürstenfeldbruck is an exception here I know that the 'head variant' is used, but the grant does not say anything about it.
Stefan Schwoon, 10 July 2001
Bavaria county flags [from Flaggenmitteilung?]:
|County or Landkreis||colours (* with coat-of-arms)||adoption date|
Jaume Ollé, 24 September 1999
These are flags of Landkreise (counties). Incorrect [colours] are:
Marcus Schmöger, 9 March 2001