Langensalza Mint

The first evidence of a Langensalza (Salza) mint was provided with bracteates belonging to the Lords of Salza , minted from around 1255 to 1300. Since 1379 the Margrave of Meissen and the Archbishop of Mainz each owned half of the coin. In 1400 it was wholly owned by the Wettins . The last coinage of the penny era is half sword penny with the year (14) 90. They were also struck in the Zwickau mint .

history

Bracteatic time

Langensalza (Salza) with the Dryburg Castle belonged to the Salza dynasty from around 1162 to 1346 . As imperial officials, you were in possession of the right to mint and in the 13th century owned a mint there , which is proven by coin finds. For example, in the Taubach coin find there was a bracteate with the inscription SAL-ZA and the image of a gentleman from Salza holding a ram's horn (his coat of arms) in his left hand. In the chronicle of the town of Langensalza from 1818 a bracteate with the inscription SALZA is described, which has the characters V. † A. † V. † A. † in the outer ring and shows a seated dynast as a coin image. The mint operated sporadically and had only a small minting volume.

Dime

In 1346 the town and the castle were sold by the then owners, the Brothers of Salza. Part of the area was given to the Archbishop of Mainz, the other to the Margrave of Meißen. Margrave Friedrich II (the Serious) (1323–1349) contested the property of the archbishop. In the course of the dispute, the margrave took possession by force of arms, with the city being largely destroyed. The result was a comparison. Langensalza became joint property in 1379. In 1400 the city belonged entirely to the Wettins.

The state main mint of the Wettins has been in Freiberg since the 13th century . At the end of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Meissnian-Saxon sovereign princes established further mints in Sangerhausen , Zwickau, Gotha , Leipzig , Weimar , Colditz , Wittenberg and Langensalza, some of which were only in operation for the production of their silver groschen currency .

In connection with the reform of the groschenmünzen , an agreement was reached between the Wettins in 1381 on the uniform issue of pfennig coins by the five Thuringian cities of Eisenach , Gotha , Jena , Langensalza and Weißensee . Accordingly, 624 pfennigs from the 12  soldered Erfurt coin mark with 0.375 g rough weight or 0.281 g fine weight at 8 pfennigs were spent on the groschen. As a result of the constant decrease in the silver content of the groschen, the coinage system for hollow pfennig minting could not be adhered to permanently. New instructions for the cities, those of 1392 and 1397 or 1398, were required, after which the silver content was reduced.

Thuringian hollow pennies in a uniform design according to the agreement with the five Wettin cities, including Langensalza, show the following images:

• 
• 
• 
• 

Under the administration of the mint in Langensalza by the two mint masters Conrad von Margreten and Sycze von Rotenfels, the fine silver content of the hollow pennies in 1399 was only 0.097 g with a rough weight of 0.260 g. On June 7, 1401, Landgrave Balthasar transferred the pfennig coin, half of which had been owned by the Wettins from 1379 and half since 1400, to the mint master Conrad von Cassel.

The Archbishop of Mainz probably also had coins minted in Salza before 1387.

After the main division of Leipzig in 1485, the city of Salza belonged to the Albertine Duchy of Saxony. Mining and minting law, however, continued to be exercised together.

The last minting of the Langensalza Mint are jointly minted half sword groschen, pfennigs and hellers of the Elector Friedrich III. (the wise) with his brother Johann and Duke Albrecht (the brave) . The groschencoins carry the year (14) 90 (KRUG No. 1708–1710). The front shows the Kurschild and the back shows the Meißen-Landsberg shield, both in three passages and on both sides with the mint master's mark clover leaf. (The coin design corresponds to the depicted half sword groschen from the Freiberg Mint - see Freiberg Mint - Groschen types and names ). They were also struck in the Zwickau mint. The minting took place according to the coinage order of 1482. 42 of them were offset against the Rhenish guilder . It was:

• 1 pointed groschen = 2 half sword groschen = 12 pfennigs = 24 heller .

POSERN-KLETT wrote in 1846:

In 1490 Frederick the Wise, Johann and Georg in Zwickau and Salza (Langensalza) united to have a quantity of silver coined according to old shot and grain . Klotzsch states that 1700  marks of silver were destined for Langensalza in order to mint 1000 marks in groschen, 550 in pfennigs and 150 in Hellern. Georg, who appears here for Duke Albrecht, stood in for his father when he was in his capacity as governor in West Friesland as a result of his warlike undertakings .

Tipper and luffing time

In the time of the falsification of money, the Kipper and Wipper era , the monopoly of the Electoral Saxon Dresden Mint was broken with the establishment of Kipper mints. In Langensalza, too, from October 1621, under the mint master Andreas Becker, the production of interim or tipper coins, which was operated on an ever larger scale, began. The mint was not leased like most of the numerous other tipper mints, but was operated as a land mint. The 12 and 24 Kreuzer pieces from 1621 with the mint mark “Three Towers” ​​(city coat of arms of Langensalza) are known for Elector Johann Georg I (1611–1656).

Carl Christoph von Brandenstein was electoral chamber councilor and advisor to the elector. The minting of the tipper coins was his responsibility in Saxony. Little is known about his work, as all too informative files were probably removed.

See also: Kippertaler

Mint master of the Langensalza Mint

(Groschen time according to KRUG, tipper and luffing time according to HAUPT)

Mint master	from	to	Mintmaster's mark	comment
Hans Münzer (Münczer) from Eschwege	Mentioned in 1392
Hans von Solsteder	Mentioned in 1398
Sycze from Rotenfels	Mentioned in 1399	1401 (?)
Conrad von Margreten	Mentioned in 1399	1401 (?)
Conrad von Cassel	Mentioned in 1401			otherwise mint master in Franconia ( Hildburghausen ?)
Augustin Horn	1490		Shamrock	also in Zwickau and Schneeberg
Andreas Becker	1621		Three towers	Tipper coin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Central Technical Committee Numismatics Berlin: Historic Mints ... , p. 20
2. ↑ Gerhard Krug: The Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen 1338-1500 , Berlin 1974, p. 187
3. ↑ Carl Friedrich von Posern-Klett: Saxony's coins in the Middle Ages ,: pp. 140–142
4. ^ Carl Friedrich Göschel: Chronicle of the City of Langensalza in Thuringia , Volume 1, 1818, p. 180. ( Digitized in the Google book search)
5. ↑ Wolfgang Steguweit: History of the Gotha Mint ... , p. 18
6. ^ Carl Friedrich von Posern-Klett: Saxony's Coins in the Middle Ages , p. 140
7. ^ Gerhard Krug: The Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 55
8. ↑ Gerhard Krug: The Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 55 (reference 255: W. Hävernick)
9. ^ Paul Arnold: The Genealogy of the Meißnisch-Saxon sovereign princes . In: “Numismatic Hefts”, No. 1/1996, p. 10
10. ↑ mcsearch: Hohlpfennige after the agreement of 1381 (except Nordhausen, the city only took over the provisions of 1381 in 1382)
11. ↑ mcsearch: Hohlpfennig after the agreement of 1381 for the uniform execution.
12. ↑ Gerhard Krug: Die Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 55, document 256
13. ↑ Gerhard Krug: The Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 55, document 257
14. ↑ acsearch: Hohlpfennig Langensalza
15. ^ Gerhard Krug: The Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 55, document 261
16. ↑ Gerhard Krug: Die Meißnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 55, document 259
17. ^ Gerhard Krug: The Meissnisch-Saxon Groschen ... , p. 96
18. ^ Carl Friedrich von Posern-Klett: Saxons coins ... , p. 141
19. ↑ Klotzsch: Sächsische Münzgeschichte , p. 217
20. ↑ Walther Haupt: Sächsische Münzkunde , p. 136 u. 202
21. ↑ Walther Haupt: Sächsische Münzkunde , p. 133

See also

• Saxon coin history

literature

• Wolfgang Steguweit : History of the Gotha Mint from the 12th to the 19th Century , Weimar 1987
• Central Technical Committee Numismatics Berlin: Historical Mints on the Territory of the GDR , Part 1, Numismatic Booklet No. 22, Berlin 1986
• Heinz Fengler, Gerd Gierow, Willy Unger: transpress Lexikon Numismatics , Umschau, Berlin 1976
• Gerhard Krug: The Meissnian-Saxon Groschen 1338–1500 , Berlin 1974
• Walther Haupt : Saxon coinage . German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1974
• Friedrich von Schrötter (Ed.): Dictionary of Coin Studies , de Gruyter, Berlin 1970 (reprint of the original edition from 1930)
• Carl Friedrich von Posern-Klett: Saxony's coins in the Middle Ages . Part 1: Mints and coins of the cities and clerical donors , Leipzig 1846, therein pp. 140–142 (Mint Langensalza (Salza))