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St. Joseph is the patron saint of Vorarlberg. His feast day, a "State holiday", is on the 19th of March.

 
 
Legal basis
The State constitution does not recognise the patron saint as an official State symbol. It only has an indirect legal basis in school law. In Vorarlberg St. Joseph's day is only a "school holiday“.
 
 
History
In 1771 Maria Theresia obtained from the Pope a restricted State holiday schedule for Austria. She also ordered that instead of the local patron saints, only the feast of a joint national patron saint was to be celebrated. 

In 1772 the relevant bishops agreed on St. Joseph for the province of West Austria to which Vorarlberg belonged at the time. The same happened in Tyrol, Carinthia, Krain and Steiermark which were also under a number of bishops. St. Joseph was the patron saint of the House of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. This made him an acceptable compromise for the bishops, most of whom were princes of the empire themselves. This meant, however, that he could not become a popular identification figure in any of "his own" provinces. In Vorarlberg, which was administrated again from Innsbruck as of 1782, he continued to be regarded as a "Tyrolean".

Since 1933 St. Joseph's day has been neither a church nor a State holiday in Vorarlberg. St. Joseph only gained significance in Vorarlberg in the years following the Second World War when St. Joseph's day became emotionally charged as an "Alemannic" State holiday. When the diocese of Feldkirch was installed in 1968, St. Gebhard and St. Fidelis were "only" made patron saints of the diocese. St. Joseph remains patron saint of the State. 

The 19th of March only became a "State holiday" in 1998. Since then State Governor Dr. Herbert Sausgruber endows meritorious citizens with State and federal honours in a ceremony on St. Joseph's day.