Beer penny
The beer penny is an earlier form of the beer tax and describes the levy on the beer consumed or imported by others . Synonymously, there were also the names Bierungeld, Bierziese, drink money Schank- or Malzaufschlag .
Examples of taxes levied
A so-called “ Grut tax” was already levied during the time of Charlemagne and the city of Ulm introduced its own beer tax as early as 1220. In 1388, Margrave Friedrich had a "Zapfenpfennig" and a "drink tax" levied in Kulmbach and the surrounding area, so that a gulden had to be paid for every load of beer.
The term arose in connection with the beer tax introduced by the dukes Wilhelm and Ludwig . The very dukes who had also enacted the Bavarian Purity Law introduced this tax because they were planning to buy the Bavarian communities of Gundelfingen , Lauingen and Höchstädt , for which they needed money. After the tax was introduced in 1543, it was 2 kreuzers per pail of beer. But already in 1594 the tax in Bavaria was 17 kreuzers and one heller per pail of beer. At that time, exactly 64 liters of beer fit in such a bucket. After 17 Kreuzer and 1 Heller corresponded to almost exactly 64 silver pfennigs , the term beer pfennig became common. It should also be noted that the dukes decided not to buy the above parishes, but left the tax in place because they had to help finance a Turkish war.
Another variant of the beer penny has been handed down , for example, from the municipality of Kirchdorf am Haunpold . To finance important community institutions, a voluntary increase of one pfennig was levied on the sale of a liter of beer. The planned measures were then financed with the proceeds.
In Dinglers Polytechnic Journal for example, was reported by the imposition of a "beer penny" in a German city, in order to finance the construction of a bridge. Anyone who drank a liter of beer in the city should pay a penny for it. Since a lot of beer was consumed in this city, the construction costs for the bridge would have been covered within two years, six months and twelve days, according to the calculation. That would have been the equivalent of 91,200,200 liters of beer.
The Munich National Theater , which was equipped with a sprinkler system in 1818 and burned down completely in January 1823 because the tanks were emptied in winter to prevent them from freezing, was then rebuilt with the help of the proceeds from a “beer penny”.
Modern considerations
In 1975 the Education and Science Union thought about increasing the beer tax by one penny per glass of beer in response to the impending teacher shortage in order to be able to pay around 10,000 teaching positions.
In 2011, a voluntary beer penny was to be introduced in Munich for the construction of a tunnel through the English Garden .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Beer tax - keyword in Pierer's Universal Lexicon , available online at zeno.org
- ↑ Nicolai Clarus: birpenninghe. (No longer available online.) In: uni-hamburg.de. Formerly in the original ; accessed on August 21, 2015 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Exotic types of tax: Where the state collects arbitrarily. In: Wirtschaftswoche. Retrieved August 21, 2015 .
- ↑ The legal basis for the beer tax is the Beer Tax Act of July 15, 2009 (Federal Law Gazette I, p. 1870) ( Memento of the original of September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, p. 41.)
- ↑ a b The story of beer - who invented the beer tax? -. In: Beer Lexicon. Retrieved August 21, 2015 .
- ↑ Christoph Rösler: A beer bridge . In: Non-profit papers for instruction and entertainment . tape 12 . Oven 1828, OCLC 315388065 , p. 796-797 ( online ).
- ↑ THEATER: Beer penny for art. In: focus.de. FOCUS Online, May 21, 2001, accessed on August 21, 2015 .
- ^ Beer penny for the teachers. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. December 9, 1975, accessed August 21, 2015 .
- ↑ Marco Völklein: Tunnel through the English Garden: A “beer penny” for reunification . In: Sueddeutsche Zeitung . November 2, 2011, ISSN 0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de ).
