Jacob's Redeemer

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Obverse and lapel of the Redeemer

The Jakobslöser is a foam coin (a so-called “ looser ”), which Friedrich Ulrich , Duke of Braunschweig and Lüneburg , Prince of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel had minted from pure gold in 1625 . One of the coins was at the October 30, 2015 auction in London for 650,000 pounds (then about 911,500 euros ) from the Richard Borek group of companies belonging MDM Münzhandelsgesellschaft auctioned. This makes the Jacob's Redeemer the most expensive German coin.

history

History of origin

The Brunswick Guelph Duke Julius , Friedrich Ulrich's grandfather , had the first “solver” minted in silver in 1574 . Coins of this type have been called the Redeemer of Julius ever since . Both the silver for the first and subsequent redeemers and the gold for the extremely rare Jacob's redeemer came from mines in the Harz Mountains that belonged to the Guelphs. The solvers were not an official means of payment , but primarily a show of power by the dukes, whose territory included the Harz mines. On the other hand, the solvers were an investment for wealthy citizens .

description

The Jakobslöser is a coin worth 20 gold guilders , which was minted in 1625 in Goslar or Zellerfeld by the Goslar mint master Hermann Schlanbusch . It has a weight of 59.32 g and is made of gold, which comes from the St. Jacob mine in Lautenthal .

The coin shows a five-fold helmeted, eleven-field coat of arms on one side , to the right of it a Wild Man as a shield holder , above the year 1625 , below the mint master's mark HS with a hook . At the edge in runs uppercase text fridericus • Ulricus • DEI • GRATIA • DUX • BRUNSUICENSIS • ET • LUNEBURG (dt. Friedrich Ulrich [of] God's grace [n] Duke [of] Brunswick and Lüneburg ).

On the other side, St. James the Elder can be seen with a hat, pilgrim's staff and book on the flower-covered earth, above him a shining sun with the name Jehovah ( YHWH ) in Hebrew in the center . Right and left of the saints written also in uppercase words are SINE DEO NIHIL and Feliciter SVCCEDIT (dt. Without God nothing succeeds happy ) to read. Around the edge there are two hexameters , some of which are shortened by short lines (so-called virgulae ): ECCE METALLIFERI CHELYS ANTE AFFLICATA IACOBI • NU (N) CP (RAE) TER MODUL (OS) • ARGE (N) TI PO (N) DER (A) • DONAT (German, see, the previously damaged lyre of the metal-bearing Jacobus now donates silver weight beyond the beat). The ambiguous terms CHELYS (eigtl. 'Turtle' or 'turtle shell', therefore transferring 'lyra' or generally a musical instrument with a hollow body, but also 'cave' or here probably 'mine') and MODULUS ('measure') , in music also 'tact') as a play on words: the mine of Jacobus now donates silver in excess of the amount , which can be related to the increased ore extraction in the Harz Mountains as well as to the obesity of the Jacobus redeemer compared to the usual denominations. In addition, the 'tortoise' ( chelys ) can awaken vague associations with the well-known 'scallop' depicted on the apostle's pilgrim hat. The signature HZ is the mark of the iron cutter .

Provenance

The provenance of the solver is as follows: At the beginning of the 19th century it was part of the collection of the Greifswald- based merchant and coin collector Carl Friedrich Pogge († 1840), one of the most famous German coin collectors at the time. Pogge's descendants had part of the collection auctioned by L. & L. Hamburger in Frankfurt / Main at the end of November 1903. At the end of October 1925, the auction house Riechmann & Co. in Halle (Saale) auctioned the collection of Bergrate Karl Vogelsang, who had died in 1920, and who owned the coin. The coin was then auctioned off at Hirsch in Munich in 1977.

The Jacob's Redeemer ended up in the so-called “ Preussag Collection ”. Preussag , founded in 1923, was originally a company in the coal and steel industry . After the group changed its business activities and its economic orientation towards tourism in 2002 , it has been trading under the acronym TUI since then . TUI, as the legal successor to the Preussag Group, decided to sell the Preussag collection. This happened in October 2015 in the London Coin Galleries by the German coin auction and gold trading house Künker from Osnabrück , to which TUI had previously sold the Preussag collection. The Jakobslöser was auctioned off as part of a collection consisting of a total of 217 solvers and 327 mining coins - again part of the Preussag collection. The estimated price was 150,000 pounds sterling (approx. 260,000 euros). The auction took place on October 30, 2015, with the Jacob's Redeemer being called up as lot  43. The hammer price was £ 650,000 for the Braunschweig-based MDM Münzhandelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG Deutsche Münze . The auction of the former Preussag coin collection brought in a total of 6.4 million pounds.

The Jacob's Redeemer is extremely rare and was the only privately owned specimen until it was sold in 2015. The coin was exhibited in the Braunschweig Palace Museum from August 2016 to March 2017 . There it is part of the special exhibition " Harz Treasury ", which deals with the influence of the Brunswick dukes on developments in the Harz region.

Criticism of the sale

Given the great cultural and historical significance of Preussag Collection whose sale by the German tourism group TUI and thus their irretrievable destruction was sharply criticized, inter alia by Gerhard Lenz, the head of the various sides UNESCO - World Heritage Site Rammelsberg , and the state of Lower Saxony .

Since roughly a tenth of the collection consisted of coins and mining issues from the Harz region, it was particularly criticized that the sale would destroy the historical context. Shortly before the auction, the state of Lower Saxony tried to prevent the export to London by including the collection in the register of nationally valuable cultural assets for Germany under the law on the protection of German cultural assets against emigration , but it came too late - the collection was already out of the country.

literature

  • Wolfgang Leschhorn : Brunswick coins and medals. 1000 years of coin art and monetary history in the city and country of Braunschweig (= Braunschweigisches Kunsthandwerk (BKH) , Volume 3). Appelhans, Braunschweig 2010, ISBN 978-3-941737-22-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Over 900,000 euros: Germany's most expensive coin In: Deutsches Münzenmagazin 1/2016.
  2. ↑ Auction catalog L. & L. Hamburger, p. 120, lot 2190.
  3. ^ Riechmann & Co. auction catalog, p. 39, lot 440.
  4. ↑ Gerhard Hirsch successor
  5. ↑ Official website of the London Coin Galleries ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2016 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / lcgcoins.com
  6. ↑ Official Künker website
  7. ↑ a b Nine million euros for Preussag-Schatz ( memento from October 31, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Video (4:42 min.) From October 30, 2015.
  8. ↑ Künker is auctioning off the largest ever collection of solvers and mining coins ( memento from June 15, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) (in Google cache )
  9. ↑ Official website of the Münzhandelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG Deutsche Münze
  10. ↑ Künker Sells Preussag Collection for £ 6.4 million
  11. ↑ Description of the solver
  12. ↑ Most valuable coin: Jakobslöser in Braunschweig on NDR.de on July 30, 2016
  13. ↑ Tui turns millions into money In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of August 10, 2015.
  14. ↑ Land escapes Millionenschatz In: Weserkurier from August 11, 2015.