Magdeburg mints
In the Magdeburg mints in Magdeburg from approx. 937 to 1767 coins were minted. On March 28, 942, King Otto I (DOI 46) transferred the income from the royal mint and customs to the Moritz monastery, which was founded in 937. This assumes that coins were minted in Magdeburg before 942. The coins are so-called Sachsenpfennige , which usually have no transcriptions. Quote from Dr. Schildmacher: "Coins that were primarily used for trade with the peoples of the East did not need legible inscriptions, if only the silver content was good." OTTO or ODDO can only be read sporadically on the Sachsenpfennigen.
The first right to mint was granted by Emperor Otto I to the Moritzkloster in Magdeburg with the certificate of July 9, 965 . It was thus a sovereign privilege that was later confirmed to the archbishop several times in further imperial privileges. Around 1138/1140, with Archbishop Konrad von Querfurt, the bracteate minting began. In the second half of the 12th century this reached its artistic peak and took place in Magdeburg, among other places. A Conrad can be identified as the first Magdeburg mint master known by name as early as the 12th century. With the change of rulership, the right to mint coins passed to the Elector of Brandenburg in 1680. The city of Magdeburg, which was under the rule of the archbishop, originally had no minting rights. The first urban coins were minted during the siege in 1550/51 due to the lack of small coins. The city then tried to obtain its own right to mint, which was then granted by Emperor Maximilian II with the privilege of September 24, 1567 . The city exercised the right to mint from 1570 until after the Thirty Years War , namely until December 1682. After the destruction of the city in 1631, some show coins were sporadically minted, which were intended to underpin the city's claim to imperial freedom. Regular thalers and their parts were also minted right up to the end, often with Luther's motto "VERBVM DOMINI MANET IN AETERNUM" (the word of the Lord remains in eternity). Here the strong anchoring of the Magdeburg population in Protestantism is expressed, at least as far as the time is concerned.
The archbishop's coin
The exact location of the first mint in the city at the time of its founding is not known. Since the Magdeburg archbishops also had the minting rights to Gittelde am Harz and Giebichenstein near Halle at the same time , it is difficult to determine the exact minting location of the coins. It must be assumed that the dies were exchanged among these mints and that not all "Magdeburg coins" of this time also came from Magdeburg. The location of the mint was only mentioned in a document at the beginning of the 15th century. At that time it was located in the middle of the old market , opposite the town hall. We owe this location information to a report in the Schöppenchronik about a riot in the city, which was triggered by intolerable abuses in the coinage. Speculators had withdrawn the good pennies and exchanged them for pennies with a lower fineness. The decline in value and the price increases, which were exacerbated by a poor harvest in 1401, led to open rioting. On September 15, 1402, small craftsmen and journeymen stormed the mint building and burned it down. In a settlement with the archbishop, the city had to undertake to rebuild the mint and the exchange bank on the market. The mint, where beer was also served, repeatedly gave rise to disputes between the city and the archbishop. The archbishop could not stand against the growing economic power of the city in the long run, especially since he was constantly in financial difficulties. In 1525 he ceded the mint and the licensing rights to the city for a high transfer fee. In addition, he got the house Alter Markt 12 on the south side of the square to compensate. The archbishop's mint was moved to this house in the same year. The council had the mint building on the market demolished. With the introduction of the Reformation in Magdeburg, the archbishop largely lost his political power and sources of income. The mint only worked sporadically, and it wasn't until 1572 that business came back to life for a short time. After another dispute with the city, the administrator moved his mint to Halle in 1582, as the archbishop called himself after converting to Lutheranism. Only small pieces were struck in Magdeburg. After the city was destroyed in 1631, minting was temporarily resumed. The main coins of the ore monastery were produced in Halle until the end of operations in 1680 .
The urban mint
The city of Magdeburg officially began its own minting after the emperor granted the right to mint in 1567. This right to mint was in contradiction to the imperial minting order , which provided for only one coin in the district. The administrator had long tried in the district councils to prevent the opening of a municipal mint, but the city, with the imperial privilege in its pocket, ignored it. Around 1570 she set up her own mint at Schmiedehofstraße 12/13 and started minting. The forging Hofstraße was at the Berlin street that the approximately at the level of today's southern Häuserfront Ernst-Reuter-Allee from Broad way toward the Elbe went. The new coin was right next to the smithy, the house of the blacksmiths' guild, which certainly had practical reasons and suggests close technical cooperation. Exact information about the coin is not available, as the coin files were burned in 1631. Hans Bruhm is mentioned as the first city mint master, followed in 1571 by Conrad Hundt and later by mint master Heinrich Meyer. From the beginning of the minting activity, large amounts of thalers and groschen were struck, which put the city mint, the arch-penal mint also active, far in the shade when it came to striking numbers. This development called the old adversaries on the scene. They accused the city of not keeping a wardein (coin control officer), as was the rule according to the Imperial Coin Regulations. In addition, the municipal mint could be accused of being underweight in small types, which, however, happened to almost all coins at the time. The matter was brought before the district council in April 1578 in Halberstadt, which ordered the minting activity to be stopped immediately and the mint master to be arrested. In 1581 the repeal of this resolution could be achieved and in 1583 the city established a ward. Coin activity was subject to strong fluctuations, and when silver prices rose , the number of mints fell and the fineness of the coins mostly deteriorated. The city mint was also destroyed in 1631 and only poorly repaired again in 1639. Some commemorative coins were minted under the mint master Peter Schrader , and regular minting only began again from 1669. After Magdeburg had become a Brandenburg country town in 1680 and could no longer claim coin sovereignty, minting had to be stopped in 1680. In September 1682 the city of Magdeburg made another attempt and minted coins. The Great Elector put an end to this illegal activity with an order of December 27, 1682.
See also: Schautaler of the city of Magdeburg from 1622 on the city's foundation
The Brandenburg-Prussian coin
The Große Münzstraße in the center of the city still reminds of the mint that existed there from 1683 to 1767. After the death of the last administrator of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg , August von Sachsen , on June 4, 1680, the city and the Duchy of Magdeburg fell to the Electorate of Brandenburg . With the sovereign rights, the minting rights were also passed on to Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (1640–1688), who had large gold and silver coins minted in 1681 on the occasion of his homage by the city. This minting probably took place in the old municipal mint on Schmiedehofstrasse and was carried out by the mint master Johann Elers. In 1683, however, a new mint began operations in Magdeburg, Große Münzstraße 7/8. The name Münzstraße was only used with the establishment of the mint for this street. Before it was called Stallstrasse and at times Ankerstrasse. House No. 7/8 was formerly named after the former owners, the "Saldernsche Hof", and was only partially destroyed in 1631. It was therefore temporarily used as the town hall and then served the Brandenburg garrison in Magdeburg as a warehouse 6 was the house where Otto von Guericke was born . Otto von Guericke's heirs bought it for the mint in 1760. The first mintmaster was the former municipal mintmaster Johann Elers ( Mmz. IE). His successor was Johann Christoph Sehle (Mmz. I CS ), who further expanded the mint and purchased new machines. After the mint took a break until 1698 due to the sharp rise in silver prices, Heinrich Friedrich Halter (Mmz. HF H) took over the office of mint master. Magdeburg had been a royal mint since 1701. It became one of the denotes the best established mints of the Prussian state. From 1719 to 1752 minting was again suspended due to a lack of silver. After the reform of the Prussian mint Essentially, it was put back into operation under the mint director Wanney and from 1752 had the mint mark "F".
The final closure took place in 1767, as the proximity of the Berlin Mint made the coin dispensable. The building was then used by the Royal Bank. Up until modern times there was a branch of the Stadtsparkasse at this point, albeit in a different building.
See also
literature
- Mülverstedt, GA v. - Magdeburg Mint Cabinet of the New Age , Magdeburg 1897
- Magdeburger Geschichtsblätter, 64th year 1929, p. 62 ff.
- Schildmacher, Rudolf - Magdeburg coins , Magdeburg undated (1936)
- Kötz, Horst - On the history of the Brandenburg-Prussian mint in Magdeburg - In "Magdeburger Blätter", year 1984, pp. 39–47