Košice gold treasure

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Košice gold treasure

The Košice gold hoard ( Košický zlatý poklad ) consists of 2,920 gold coins ( ducats ), three gold medals and a Renaissance gold chain from the 15th to 17th centuries. It was discovered in 1935 during the construction of the new building of the Finance Directorate at Hlavná Street No. 68 (German Main Street) in Košice (German Kaschau ) in eastern Slovakia and is considered to be one of the largest depot finds of this type in Europe.

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Exhibition in the vault of the East Slovak Museum

The pot of gold weighs a total of 11.5 kg and was kept in a loaf-shaped copper vessel consisting of two pots that fit one inside the other. The treasure objects were possibly covered by an unspecified textile. The surface of the upper pot is decorated with drawings of mythical creatures and animals, with a stag in the centre, a unicorn above and below the stag, a bear and a smaller creature (possibly a hare ) on the top, an owl below of the hare and a jumping dog and a bird at the bottom. The actual purpose of the vessel as well as the place and time of its creation are unknown, it is assumed that it is a hunting motif popular in the Renaissance.

The Renaissance gold chain is 2.14 m long and weighs 587.14 g. According to a quality test from 2006, the fineness is about 990/1000. At that time, a gold chain symbolized the social position in society, so both the weight and the length play a role. The exact time of origin and the identity of the goldsmith are unknown, the piece of jewelery bears no hallmark.

The oldest gold medal shows King Ludwig II of Bohemia and Hungary and was minted in 1525 in the Kremnitz mint . The creator of this motif is unknown. The other two gold medals are the work of the Kremnitz medalist Christopher Fueszl: the first from 1544 also shows Ludwig II, but was not made until the reign of Ferdinand I. The third piece is an equestrian medal of Ferdinand I from 1541 with artistic Influences from Hall in Tirol and is considered particularly valuable, since silver Renaissance medals with the same motif are relatively common at auctions in Europe, while gold medals are not known apart from the one in the Košice gold hoard.

The 2920 coins come from 81 mints in different regions of Europe, with one of the coins, a West Frisian ducat, probably lost in the 1970s. The average fineness of the coins is about 950/1000. Coins from the Kingdom of Hungary are represented most frequently with 1187 coins. The minting date covers a period of almost 280 years from about 1402/1404 to 1679, from Sigismund of Luxembourg to Leopold I. , and almost all rulers of the Kingdom of Hungary from the 15th to the 17th century are depicted. Among the Hungarian coins, two ducats with countermarks from the city of Danzig should be highlighted. Most coins date from the 1640s and 1650s. The 251 Transylvanian coins are also linked to the Kingdom of Hungary , since the then Upper Hungarian and today East Slovak cities, including what was then Kosice, traded briskly with Transylvania.

The second largest group, with a number of 1016 individual pieces (including the lost coin), are coins from various provinces and cities of the Netherlands and later the Republic of the United Netherlands , which were widespread in Europe at the time because of the large number and relatively good quality. Coins from the province of Utrecht (346), West Frisians (238), Geldern (151) and the city of Zwolle (100) are quite common. Overall, Hungarian, Transylvanian and Dutch coins account for about 85 percent of all coins in the hoard.

111 coins from the areas of the Polish crown are also connected with the find site due to extensive trade relations. 57 of these are from the port city of Danzig, 17 from Thorn , one from Elbląg , while the remaining 36 coins depict the Polish King John II Casimir . Individual pieces from the Archdiocese of Salzburg (31), from Bohemia (26), from Austrian countries (24, 22 from Lower Austria and one piece each from Carinthia and Styria ), 22 coins each from Silesia and Upper Italy (17 from the Republic of Venice , two each from Savoy and Modena and one from Mirandola ), from Spain (13), Denmark (8), Sweden (3) and one each from England , Glatz , Livonia (under Swedish occupation) and Reval .

A further 201 coins come from other dominions and cities of the Holy Roman Empire (apart from the Low Countries, Silesia, Bohemia, Glatz and Austria). This includes pieces from Stralsund (10), Wismar (1) and Erfurt (3), which were temporarily under Swedish rule, as well as one piece each from the modern-day French cities of Besançon and Strasbourg . For example, Brandenburg-Prussia (14), Kurmainz (11), Brandenburg-Ansbach and Saxony (6 each), from the cities of Hamburg (37), Frankfurt am Main (29), Nuremberg (17), Augsburg (14 ) and Lübeck (13).

A special case is a stater depicting the Thracian ruler Lysimachus (323–281 BC), which may not, however, date from his time. It may be a Celtic or Transylvanian replica.

story

Replica of the place where it was found

The youngest coin comes from the Kremnitz mint and was minted in 1679. In connection with the political situation in Hungary, the burial is dated to between 1680 and 1682. At that time, the insurgent kurucs , led by Emmerich Thököly , were marching, who wanted to conquer the city of Košice, which actually happened in 1682 after the city surrendered on October 15 to a kuruc army of about 14,000 men and an Ottoman army of 40,000 men . Presumably the owner of the treasure was a rich supporter of the Habsburgs (see below for more) who walled the treasure up under the building of the Zipser Chamber, the branch of the supreme financial authority in Vienna for what was then Upper Hungary , for fear of looting during the conquest . The Habsburgs recaptured the city on October 25, 1685, also with the help of one of the kuruc commanders. The building of the Zipser Chamber was significantly rebuilt in 1770, but the treasure remained undiscovered.

The baroque building of the Spiš Chamber was demolished in 1935 to make room for a new building of the Finance Directorate at what was then Štefánikova Street 74 (now Hlavná Street 68). The copper box was discovered on August 24, 1935 at 11:45 a.m. during the foundation work. After handing it over to the site manager, 2796 coins were counted at first. The workers wanted to take parts of the treasure and sell them to a goldsmith, but their intention was betrayed and they were arrested by the police while trying to sell the coins in a city park. As a result of the attempted theft, the finders lost the right to a reward, which at the time amounted to a third of the find's value. The police were able to secure 126 stolen coins. Thus, there should have been 2922 coins, but today it is unclear whether the two missing coins were lost or whether there was a counting error and possibly whether the police had secured all the stolen coins. The treasury was first kept in the Finance Directorate building in Košice, later it came to the General Treasury Treasury and the Museum of Local History (today part of the Slovak National Museum ) in Bratislava , where the coins were inventoried for the first time. In 1940 the treasure came into the Central Treasury and was subsequently deposited in the Numismatics Department of the National Museum in Prague , where the detailed description and analysis lasted until 1942. During World War II , government circles in the Third Reich and Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1944) , including Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring , State Secretary to the Reichsprotektor Karl Hermann Frank , and the Hungarian head of state Miklós Horthy , were interested in the treasure, so it was packed in two crates and buried in a secret place near Prague.

The gold treasure survived the turmoil of war undamaged and returned to the numismatics department in 1947. In the same year detailed information was published in the collection of the National Museum, a year later Emanuela Nohejlová-Prátová published the first monograph (Košický zlatý poklad. Nález mincí 15. - 17. století v Košicích r. 1935) in Prague . The treasure was exhibited for the first time in Prague in 1953, parts were brought to Košice for exhibition in 1956 and again in 1967, both times with great visitor interest. After the end of the exhibition in 1967, the treasure initially remained in the vault of the State Bank branch in Košice, a part has since been exhibited in the Bratislava City Museum. In order to keep the treasure permanently in Košice, a large underground safe was built in 1969 under the main building of the East Slovak Museum . The permanent exhibition of the Košice gold treasure has been open to the public since 1970. In 1974 management of the treasury was transferred from the Czechoslovak Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Socialist Republic (SSR). In February 1980, the Ministry of Finance of the SSR, the Košice District Finance Directorate, the Košice District National Committee and the East Slovak Museum concluded an agreement on duties, privileges and administrative cooperation. As a result, the Ministry of Finance had the right to carry out annual inventories. These took place from 1981 to 1991, others only followed in 1995 and 2006. In 1998 there was a further transfer from the Ministry of Finance of the now independent Slovak Republic to the Ministry of Culture. Since March 30, 1998, the treasures have been under the administration of the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava, but they remain physically in Košice.

During the reconstruction work in the East Slovak Museum from 2008 to 2013, the gold treasure was deposited in the Slovak National Museum in Bratislava and was exhibited in museums in Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, e.g. B. in the spring of 2011 in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest . As part of the renovation works in the East Slovak Museum, the exhibition in the vault was significantly changed and equipped with modern audio-visual equipment.

Estimate and owner

Entrance to the underground vault

The gold treasure of Košice consists of 2920 ducats, including 216 double ducats, which makes 3136 ducats. The three medals have a total value of approximately 24.57 ducats, the gold chain 165 ducats. In total the treasure was worth about 3325.57 ducats, which was a large sum for the time around 1680. One can also illustrate the value using denarii , which were the most commonly used in everyday life in the Kingdom of Hungary at that time. The exact exchange rate for ducats in Kosice from around 1680 is not known; in the nearby towns of Zipser Neudorf and Leutschau it was 1 ducat = 425 denarii in 1679 and 1680, and 1 ducat = 426 denarii in 1681. Thus, the estimated value is 1,416,693 denarii, which was an unattainable sum for ordinary people with wages at that time. For example, the daily wage of a day laborer in nearby Spiš was 24 denarii, a journeyman carpenter received 30 denarii and a journeyman mason 48 denarii per day. Accordingly, a day laborer would have to work 59,029 days or about 161.6 years, a journeyman 47,223 days or about 129.3 years and a journeyman bricklayer 29,514 days or about 80.8 years to reach this total. On the other side are the highest officials of the Zipser Chamber, under whose building the treasure was hidden: the president received an annual salary of 2400 ducats in 1689, an adviser 600 ducats, a secretary and archivist 400 ducats each, an assistant to the archivist 150 ducats and a scribe 100 ducats.

The identity of the owner is still unknown, but based on the composition of the treasure, one suspects that it could have been a rich collector or Emmerich Thökoly . Since the coins were circulation coins circulating among wealthy people at the time, the treasure was therefore owned by a person from a higher social class. The possibility of the Spiš Chamber as an asset is considered unlikely, since the majority of the high officials of the Spiš Chamber remained loyal to the Emperor and after the recapture of Košice by Imperial troops in 1685, there would have been no possibility that the court would have been so high sum would not have known. Three people are named as the most likely owners. The first is Franciscus Bernardus Wegele Walsegg, President of the Chamber from 1675 to 1682, who after escaping in February 1682 died in Vienna on 17 November the same year . The second person is Sigismundus Hollo, one of the three advisers imprisoned for refusing to cooperate after the conquest of Kosice in 1682, who died in Kraków on April 9, 1685 . The last possible person mentioned is Martinus Madarász, also an adviser who defected to Thököly but committed suicide before the imperial reconquest of the city (probably in 1683).

The other two high officials of the Zipser Chamber at that time, the third adviser Albretus Ludovicus Thavonath and Treasurer Balthasar Pottornyay, managed to escape and returned after the recapture of Kosice by imperial troops and thereafter held high posts in the Chamber to the death so had the opportunity to dig up the treasure again. For this reason they are not mentioned as possible owners.

importance

The Košice gold hoard is one of the most important gold finds in Europe, with coins from different countries that had different relationships with the then Kingdom of Hungary. Some coins came into the country through military interventions (e.g. Thirty Years' War ), others through trade relations. Due to the size of the find, the gold treasure can hardly be compared with other gold finds in the region. It is unclear, for example, to what extent foreign gold coins were used in payment transactions in the Kingdom of Hungary at the time.

A comparable gold find with 261 gold coins and a medal, which was unearthed in April 2002 in a field near the Hungarian municipality of Újfehértó in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county , is dated to the time of the Thököly uprising, similar to the Košice gold treasure, more precisely in the years 1684 and 1685; the Hungarian coins (132) also cover the period from the 15th to the 17th century, and foreign coins (Austria, Prince Archbishopric of Salzburg, Bohemia, Poland, German-speaking areas of the HRR, Venice, etc.) are also represented here. What is striking, however, is the significantly smaller proportion of coins from the Netherlands, with only five individual pieces.

trivia

The Slovak light music competition Košický zlatý poklad , which has been held since 1980 and is broadcast on Slovak radio , is named after the find . In 2021 the 37th edition took place.

literature

  • Marek Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure . Slovart, Bratislava 2007, ISBN 978-80-8085-576-5 (Slovak, English, monograph, with photographs of individual pieces).

itemizations

  1. ↑ a b One of the European artistic gems found in the historic heart of Košice , In: spectator.sme.sk of 25 May 2021, accessed 10 December 2021.
  2. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 37-38
  3. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 33-36
  4. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , p. 32
  5. ↑ a b Košický zlatý poklad , In: historyweb.dennikn.sk of 10 June 2013, retrieved 11 December 2021.
  6. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 30-32
  7. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 19 and 29
  8. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 25-27
  9. ^ a b Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , p. 20
  10. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , p. 31
  11. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 39-40
  12. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , p. 16
  13. ↑ a b Marián Gladiš: Košický zlatý poklad lákal Göringa i Horthyho , In: cassovia.sk of February 9, 2007, accessed December 10, 2021.
  14. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 13-14
  15. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 14-15
  16. ↑ Košický zlatý poklad vystavujú v Národnom múzeu v Budapešti , In: sme.sk of 31 January 2011, retrieved 11 December 2021.
  17. ↑ Po piatich rokoch sa otvára historická účelová budova Východoslovenského múzea , In: vucke.sk of September 12, 2013, accessed December 11, 2021.
  18. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 43-44
  19. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , pp. 41-42
  20. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , p. 42
  21. ↑ Budaj: Košický zlatý poklad – The Košice Gold Treasure , p. 17
  22. ↑ Sárga ördög – A Jósa András Múzeum aranyai , In: josamuzeum.hu, retrieved December 11, 2021.
  23. ↑ RTVS vyhlasuje 37. ročník Košického zlatého pokladu , In: teraz.sk of April 30, 2021, accessed December 10, 2021.

web links

Commons : Košice Gold Treasure  - collection of images, videos and audio files