Hello fellow Steemians and welcome to my review of the Austrian flag (not Australian, Austrian! In Europe!) This is the 10th (can't believe we are in double digits already!) flag I will be covering in my series to cover most of the flags of the world! I hope you stay along for the ride, enjoy, learn something new and hopefully you will also start enjoying vexillology (the world needs more people getting into vexillology trust me!)
The plan is to go ahead and try to cover most of the flags in alphabetical order! So we still have long ways to go! Hope you stay for the ride!
Today's Flag is the Flag of Austria!
The flag of Austria is a horizontal triband of equal sized conformed on three colors, red on top and bottom and white in the middle. The flag is based on the Babenberg dynasty coat of arms and it was adopted as a national flag in 1918.
Babanberg Dynasty Coat of Arms
Meaning
The meaning behind the Austrian flag is really unique, there's not a precise meaning to each color but rather, the whole flag comes from a legend that dates back to the year of 1191!
The year was 1191 and Duke Leopold V was in the middle of the third crusade, this crusade was one of the bloodiest crusades and its objective was to recover the sacred city of Jerusalem (spoiler alert, they failed! sorry, the movie has been out for almost 900 years, this shouldn't really count as a spoiler at this point). After the long and arduous battle of Ptolemais, the Duke had slain so many enemy soldiers, that his whole body was blood soaked, the only thing that remained clean was his white garment under his sword's belt.
Thats where the white and red colors, from the Duke's blood soaked body and his tiny white sword belt. This makes the Austrian flag the 2nd oldest flag in Europe with only Denmark beating it in first place.
Other Flags
There's an alternative version of the Austrian flag, which is personally my favorite version of this flag, because i'm extremely biased towards eagles in flags.
Alternate Version of the Austrian Flag
Then there's the Austrian Flag when they where under control of the Habsburg Dynasty, Its a relatively simple flag, but if you are interested in European and Austrian history and don't know anything about the Habsburgs you should go read about them, because they where extremely powerful and always controlled something in Europe for at least a thousand years in Europe before falling out of grace at the end of World War I. The Habsburgs where so powerful, that to this day there's still an Habsburg heir apparent for the throne of Austria just in case the monarchy returns.
You can not talk about Austrian flags without mentioning the Autro-Hungarian Empire flag! This is a really interesting flags which tries to combine both the flag of Austria and the flag of Hungary into the same design, but also has both flags in the flag. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was disbanded at the end of World War I in the treaty of Versailles.
Facts
Most of the country within the Alps Mountain range making it a harsh to inhabit area, this creates an interesting phenomenon where 25% of the population of the country live in its capital, the city of Vienna.
After the end of World War II, the country pledged to eternal neutrality, just like their neighbors in Switzerland.
Austria is a member of the European Union but its not a member of NATO.
There's an Austrian restaurant that has been operating continuously for more than 1200 years, its name is St. Peter Stiftskeller.
Location
Austria is located in east central Europe, This map shows the location of Austria and its location within the European Union.
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Some of the flags in this article where sourced from Pixabay, a royalty free image source!
The picture showing the location of the country was sourced from Wikipedia