Money box
A money box or piggy bank (rare: Savings pot special also: piggy bank ) is a container for saving coins by simply dumping from a designated slot opening. Removing the savings, on the other hand, is usually made more difficult by a closure or even requires (with many ceramic money boxes) the object to be smashed.
history
Money boxes are closely related to the history of money and the history of private saving . They have a social and cultural-historical significance, especially for the time when it was not yet possible to save accounts.
Greeks and Romans
One of the earliest savings containers dates from the 2nd century BC. BC and was found in Priene (middle Ionia in what is now Turkey ) during the excavation of a residential building. It is modeled on a Greek treasure temple and has a slot for coins in the gable of the temple. Such a treasure house was called " Thesauros ". This word was adopted in the Romance languages and later used either to denote the treasure chest or the treasure itself. It was also carried over to money boxes and eventually became the term “ safe ” in German usage .
The number of money box finds from the Roman Empire is extraordinarily large. The characteristic type for the Romans was made of baked clay and was pear-shaped as the simplest result of pottery wheel work.
Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
Iron , lock-hung money boxes in particular have survived the Middle Ages . In some cases it is also a collection container used by medieval guilds and brotherhoods for the purpose of poor relief and other charitable aspects. However, clay and other types of ceramics were still mostly used as common materials. Animal shapes are also increasingly found as money boxes.
The piggy bank is particularly known and popular to this day. The pig has been a good luck charm and symbol of fertility, usefulness and frugality since ancient times . On the one hand, this was due to the high number of piglets, and on the other hand, pigs were fattened by feeding leftovers or excess or perishable crop waste from the summer. In this way, they ensured the protein and fat supply in winter. The piggy bank is also known in English as a “piggy bank”. The oldest piggy bank found in Germany comes from Billeben in Thuringia and is dated to the 13th century. On the other hand, in contrast to the piggy bank found at Schweinheim Castle in Euskirchen , this pig sculpture fails to prove that coins were collected in it. The piggy bank from Euskirchen is assigned to the knight Spies von Büllesheim, who is said to have invented it around 1576, because the youngest coin found in the pig dates from this time.
And the preventive driving were used in different countries and cultures squirrels , the cash cow , the luck-bringing Ladybug , the wise elephant , the person sitting on the nest hen (saving chicken) and many other animal species . A money box shape that has been common since ancient times is the beehive as a symbol for the busy, tireless collecting of bees .
Baroque
In the baroque period we find money boxes for the first time as valuable objects of high artistic value, e.g. B. made of the finest Delft porcelain . The sponsorship money boxes, which were venerated as baptism gifts in the bourgeoisie in the Rococo , Empire , but especially in Biedermeier , Historicism and Art Nouveau times (often with the date of baptism engraved , initials etc.), are often artistic jeweler works of silver with ornamental decorations and a small padlock provided. The works of Viennese silversmiths of the Biedermeier period are particularly outstanding here . A popular shape in particular was the little money bag with a handle, which over time could increasingly be purchased in a simpler version from industrial small- scale production (mostly silver-plated, nickel silver ) and thus became fashionable among broader sections of the population.
Modern money boxes
Especially in the USA, but also in England and Germany, a large number of mechanical money boxes were developed (and in some cases patented) in the 19th and 20th centuries, in which a mechanism is set in motion by inserting a coin or pressing a button has been. The Anglo-American mechanical Spardosen are predominantly of cast iron (cast iron) is made, while the German primarily of lithographed sheet were prepared. Due to the toy character of the object, the money box also gained interest in the toy industry and has been a by-product in the product repertoire of well-known toy manufacturers ( Rock & Graner , Bing Brothers , Märklin , Felix Lasse , Georg Kühnrich , Saalheimer & Strauss , Michael Seidel , Geobra) since around 1890 , G. Zimmermann ). In particular of Nuremberg and the surrounding area (eg. Zirndorf ), the world's leading production site for toys , also was export - demand covered. Industry made large numbers possible from around 1900 . There were even money boxes among the “penny items”, the penny toys . The tin money boxes were predominantly made from tinplate and printed using the screen printing process.
Around 1920 , savings banks , and later banks , began to systematically issue home savings boxes (mostly home savings cassettes in a simple, elegant sheet steel design), primarily to educate children to save or to save small amounts. For these money boxes, a deposit was usually entered in the savings book as security against loss and damage, they were - at least initially - so borrowed and still belonged to the issuing bank, which also kept the appropriate key , usually a standard key , to open. Since 1925 , home savings boxes have been distributed to potential customers of children and school age - often in connection with school savings - primarily on the occasion of World Savings Day . At the beginning of the 1930s, so-called savings watches were also issued.
A particularly large variant of the money box is the savings box , which has been verifiable since the 1920s , also known as the savings box or savings box. The sheet metal or wooden boxes with several slots are used for community or club savings and are now preferred in restaurants . In the past they were given out free of charge by banks to attract and retain customers, but now the operators usually have to take care of setting up and maintaining the savings cabinets themselves.
Uses
The banks still use the money box for advertising purposes . Promotional money boxes were and are also used by numerous other companies as a slogan and mentality mediator in order to draw attention to the idea of saving money for the purchase of a certain object. Even today, children are introduced to the money box as a collection box through toy shapes. Today these money boxes are mainly made of plastic , those in the souvenir industry are also made of ceramic and wood; they are more and more traded as souvenirs. The money box has become a collection item.
The donation box is often made similar to the money box , but has a different purpose.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hurschmann, Rolf. Piggy bank. The new Pauly. Edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Antiquity), Manfred Landfester, Reception and Science History, Brill, 2009
literature
- Tyll Kroha: Piggy banks. A breviary. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Braunschweig 1959 ( Breviary series ).
- Hans Peter Thurn : The culture of thrift. The cultural history of saving. Illustrated with money boxes from two thousand years ago. 2nd Edition. German Sparkassenverlag. Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-09-311603-1 .
- Lothar Beinke: Collectors - Collections - Exhibitions. Money box and scales, silver bag and sugar tongs. Der Andere Verlag, Osnabrück 2003, ISBN 3-89959-090-2 .
- Lothar Beinke: Money boxes. Reflections on collecting. Essay. in: The Bank Collector (magazine of European money box collectors ), issue 2-2010.
- Lothar Beinke: About collecting and saving - illustrated in a money box collection , Bad Honnef, 2013
