House cooperative (coinage)

A house cooperative was a form of organization of merchant capital that was common in some mints in the Middle Ages.

A mint owner could not always have the silver necessary for Kurant coins mined in his own mines. The members of the household (= members belonging to the mint) then procured the silver on their own account. They were involved in the strike treasure alongside the minters .

In addition, they were granted privileges:

own jurisdiction
Monopoly of changing coins
Tax exemption.

There is evidence that the mints Augsburg, Bamberg, Basel, Erfurt, Goslar, Cologne, Mainz, Öhringen, Regensburg, Speier ( Speyer ), Strasbourg, Weißenburg, Vienna, Worms and Würzburg used a house cooperative. The number of housemates fluctuated between 12 (Augsburg) and 454 (Würzburg). The mint master also belonged to the house association; he was at their head. The mint guard (guardian) was entrusted with the supervision of the minting (guarding). After a heyday in the 12th to 15th centuries, silver procurement was increasingly taken over by large trading houses such as the Fuggers and the Welsers .

literature

W. Jesse: The German Münzer house cooperatives. In: Numismatic Journal. Vienna 1930, No. 63, p. 47 ff.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Heinz Fengler, Gerhard Gierow, Willy Unger: Transpress Lexicon Numismatics. Berlin 1976, pp. 179/180.
↑ Julius Kindler von Knobloch : Das Goldene Buch von Straßburg , In: Jahrbuch der kheraldischen Gesellschaft Adler zu Wien, 1884–1885, 1st part: in the 11th year of the yearbook. Self-published, Vienna 1884, p. 71.

[Fengler_Lexikon-1] A ^b ^c ^d Heinz Fengler, Gerhard Gierow, Willy Unger: Transpress Lexicon Numismatics. Berlin 1976, pp. 179/180.

[2] Julius Kindler von Knobloch : Das Goldene Buch von Straßburg , In: Jahrbuch der kheraldischen Gesellschaft Adler zu Wien, 1884–1885, 1st part: in the 11th year of the yearbook. Self-published, Vienna 1884, p. 71.