Linz Mint
The old town of Enns was documented as the first mint in what is now Upper Austria between 1185 and 1331. After the education of the state ob der Enns , in which Enns only came to lie on the state border, Enns got increasingly competition from Linz . Duke Albrecht VI. still had coins produced in both Linz and Enns, but under Ferdinand I there was only the Linz mint in Upper Austria.
Linz Mint under Albrecht VI. (1458-1459)
Duke Albrecht VI. took over the rule in Austria above the Enns in 1458 and immediately took care of the coinage. On July 13, 1458, he appointed Hansmann Beyland (also Weyland or Wieland) from Wesel for six years as mint master “in Linz or wherever else he would order it”. In Albrecht's four mint regulations between July 1458 and October 1459 Linz is mentioned once and Enns three times with the addition “or where we will manage it”, while the third Upper Austrian mint Freistadt is not explicitly mentioned. From the few coin finds it can be concluded that the mint was struck in Linz in 1458 and 1459 and the mint was then relocated to Enns. Unfortunately, the mint in Linz can no longer be located, while in Enns the house at Hauptplatz 19 (today the Lauriacum Museum) was used for this. The exact end of the Enns mint is currently unknown. With the death of Albrecht, the land fell to Friedrich III. , under which the Enns stamping activity should soon have ended.
According to Albrecht's determination, gold guilders , groschen and cruisers were to be produced in Linz , but only traditional pfennigs and cruisers were minted. After increasing the stroke rate had weekly, on Saturday to deliver 200 pounds penny to the ducal chamber. That is roughly equivalent to an annual production of 100,000 pounds sterling. On the other hand, Albrecht's fourth coinage system lowered the coinage rate , which resulted in the country being flooded with black pennies and no one wanted to accept the so-called spoilers any more . For this reason, in 1460, Friedrich III. in Vienna and Albrecht VI. in Enns with the coinage of white pennies .
Mintmaster Weyland was arrested in 1460 for having withdrawn from his service without the Archduke's permission and released after his property had been confiscated. But also the Enns mint master Hans Jäger had to swear primal feuds because of irregularities and renounce his possessions in Enns and elsewhere.
Linz Mint under Ferdinand I (1526–1558)
After taking office and getting married in the spring of 1521, the future Emperor Ferdinand I immediately began to reorganize the coinage and monetary system. On February 15, 1524, the Viennese mint master Thomas Beheim published the new minting order valid for Austria and Tyrol, which Ferdinand I was unfortunately unable to enforce across the empire on the Esslingen Mint Day in October 1524. The battle of Mohács on August 29, 1526 was decisive for the establishment of the mint in Linz. Because both the associated increase in the area of Bohemia and western Hungary and the imminent threat from the Turks further exacerbated the coin question. Archduke Ferdinand appointed mint masters for Linz and Graz in December 1526, two of the 19 mints during his reign (Hall, Linz, Vienna, Pressburg; St. Veit, Klagenfurt and Graz south of the Alps; Joachimstal , Kuttenberg and Prague in Bohemia; Breslau, Teschen, Neusohl, Kremnitz , Kaschau, Nagybanya and Hermannstadt in the east; Stuttgart and Thann in the west).
Linz mint master
Hans Stengl from Augsburg (Stängl, Stenngl) approached Archduke Ferdinand in October 1526 with the request to set up a mint in Linz. He will bear the costs himself and get the necessary silver for the coin. Stengl owned a silver mine in Krumau, but the approaching Ottomans who besieged Vienna in 1529 disrupted Stengl's silver trade with Vienna and furnace and brought him into economic difficulties. Archduke Ferdinand, for his part, had gold and silver collected from monasteries and churches and brought to Linz. Hans Stengl was appointed mint master in December 1526, but in some cases he did not keep to the agreements. The Lower Austrian Chamber criticized the fact that at least half of it was minted in small coins, although according to the coinage system only a quarter was allowed. After many other complaints, Stengl was recalled in 1534.
The new mint master Ruprecht Puellacher, who was mentioned as a master blacksmith in Linz as early as 1531, bought silver from the Krumau mines from Jobst and Peter Rosenberg . Puellacher, who was valued by the Duke, received permission in 1538 to also produce gold coins (gold coins were only made in Vienna, Kremnitz, Graz and Klagenfurt at that time). Ruprecht Puellacher also jumped in on special orders to quickly raise money, for example, on the basis of a letter dated September 11, 1543 from Prague, he hastily struck 1700 gold coins to the satisfaction of the sovereign. In 1545 Ruprecht Puellacher was promoted to Joachimstal, where he moved with his family. However, he also kept his job as a mint in Linz, for which his brother Wolfgang Puellacher was appointed as administrator. The departure of Ruprecht Puellacher together with the new Reichsfuß (determination of the fineness by the 2nd Reich Coin Order of 1551) led to the decline of the Linz mint and finally to the complete cessation of minting in 1558, in the year in which Ferdinand I was proclaimed emperor and exactly one hundred years after the start of the Linz Mint. The "Münzgezeug" was brought in 1569 to the old Dominican monastery in Budweis , where the Prague minters had fled from the plague that was rampant in Prague and where coins were minted until 1611.
Linz coin writer
The sovereign reserved the appointment of a coin writer. He had to record the silver deliveries, check the casts and keep sealed samples that could only be opened on the orders of the Duke or the Lower Austrian Chamber. The mint writer should live in the mint itself or in its neighborhood in order to be able to exercise his office at any time. Jakob Hartmann received his instruction as a coin scribe on December 22nd, 1526. In 1528 he was followed by Sigmund Petinger and a few months later by Wolfgang Grünthaler.
Linz coins
Pfundner (12 Kreuzer), Sechser (6 Kreuzer) and Pfennige come from the time of Stengl . From 1534, groschen (3 cruisers) and simple cruisers were also produced in Linz. From 1536 thaler and half thaler were minted from the silver delivered. Linz gold coins have been documented since 1539. The quarter thaler was added from 1542.
All coins show on the obverse a bust of Ferdinand, looking to the left or to the right, wearing a crown and armor, holding the scepter in one hand and the pommel of the sword in the other hand. The transcription shows the following text, whereby the letters in italics are missing on some coins due to lack of space, but the normally printed letters were always embossed:
FERDINAND D G ROM HVNG BOE DAL CRO ETC REX
These characters stand for
Ferdinandus Dei Gratia Romanorum Ungariae Boemiae Dalmatiae Croatiae Etcetera Rex Ferdinand, aus Gottes Gnaden König von Rom, Ungarn, Böhmen, Dalmatien, Kroatien etc.
On the lapel is the eagle, always looking to the left, with the Obderennsian coat of arms, and there is the following inscription:
INF HISPA ARCHIDVX AVSTRIE DVX BVRGVN
That means
Infans Hispaniarum, Archidux Austriae, Dux Burgundiae Spanischer Infant, Erzherzog von Österreich, Herzog von Burgund
Fine collections of Linz coins can be found in the Linz Castle Museum , in the coin cabinet of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and in the numismatic collection of the Historisches Museum in Vienna.
Linz Mint
The former mint is located at Pfarrplatz 19. To the east was the cemetery of the parish church (now the paved parish square). On November 20, 1573, Ruprecht Puellacher's still unmarried son Georg sold the mint as an agent for his mother, the widow Anna Puellacher, together with other related heirs residing in Regensburg and Straubing. The house is not far from Johannes Kepler's house and has a beautiful three-story round bay window with four windows that are close together on each floor.
Resuscitation attempt 1612
The Upper Austrian estates, who employed Johannes Kepler as a regional cartographer in 1612 and ordered the first printer in the country with Hans Planck in 1615 (whose successor Crispinus Voytlender founded the Linzer Zeitung , which is still published ), were also interested in the revitalization of the domestic mint. District administrator Hanns Wilhelm von Zelking sent an inquiry to the Budweiser mint master Christoph Mattighofer, whose mint had been closed the year before, in early 1612. Mattighofer prepared an expert opinion for the stands and promoted the profitable establishment of a mint in Linz. A statement by the estates is unfortunately not known, but Christoph Mattighofer died on June 19, 1613 completely in debt, so that his property was sold, and the attempt to rebuild the Linz mint ultimately failed.
literature
- Heidelinde and Gunter Dimt: The Linzer Taler . Linz 1990.
- Fritz Hippmann: Numismata Obderennsia I: Coins and money substitutes . Linz 1997.