Rotating stars
The designation rotating stars stands for a variant of the German euro coins . This coinage was officially destroyed, but some copies were still in circulation and are sought-after collector's items by numismatists .
The backs of the German euro coins and the European flag each show twelve stars. In the destroyed variant of the coins, the stars pointed radially from the center point with a point outwards. They were arranged rotated around the center. On the European flag, however, the stars shown point upwards.
At the end of August 1998, the minting of the new euro coins began publicly in the presence of the then Federal Finance Minister Theo Waigel and the Berlin Senator for Finance Annette Fugmann-Heesing . All designs published until then showed the rotating stars . The differences between coins and flags were only noticed after production started. The coins minted up to then were canceled and destroyed. After the production of new dies for the reverse side, production could be resumed.
Upright stars on the European flag
Rotating stars, therefore not a correct European flag
Trivia
A similar problem occurred during the 2016 Summer Olympics . Here the tips of the four small stars on the flags of the People's Republic of China pointed upwards, while they should have pointed to the large star, which symbolizes the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party .
Web links
- German euro coins with radially aligned stars ( Memento from November 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )