Please Explain The German States To Me

You may very well have someone answer your questions all at one time, however, if you do not receive that satisfaction I might suggest that you pose your questions one at a time.

Some of your questions could have pages of answers just for a single inquiry.

So I hope I'm wrong and folks do answer your questions, but if you see little in response, it might be the time to try one question at a time.

Note: I'm extremely far from an expert; this is mostly basically common sense with a little bit of history (and some half-remembered snippets from CCF).

Also, sorry for being so late (as I have already mentioned, an almost-finished earlier version of this reply was lost when I accidentally closed my tab).


Most likely, just like in most other pre-modern places and times, the coins were mostly accepted by weight, with a correction for purity.

Merchants mostly tended to know the standards of many other states, and could accept the coins at the proper exchange rate (with a slight premium for conversion); normal people would probably rarely accept coins they were not familiar with (if anybody asked them, anyway, which probably wasn't that often).

Some currency unit conversions were fairly standard across many states (1 albus = 8 pfennig, 1 schilling = 12 pfennig), but the size of the units themselves differed significantly.

And yes, there were a few currency union agreements, but I can't recall any specific details precisely.

Much the same as the above, but since they were more standartized in terms of weight and purity, acceptance was probably better (especially of ducats).

You could have probably gotten away with taking a thaler from a large state on one side of Germany and spending it in a large state on the other side of Germany (in fact, due to the trade part mentioned above, it likely wasn't even that rare - IIRC, Swiss thalers have been found in Russia).
However, it still would have been accepted for its weight and purity - which might have ended up as somewhat less than a local thaler (or perhaps a bit more if the slight differences in standards fell that way - though in this case it's not unlikely that it would just have been accepted as a regular thaler, without informing you of the actual slightly higher value).

All over the place.

Essentially, a thaler was a (fairly) standard quantity of silver, and a ducat was a (somewhat more) standard quantity of gold.
So an exchange rate between them was essentially a proxy for the gold/silver ratio, and varied with the latter.

A figure of 3 1/2 thalers per ducat comes to mind, but I can't recall enough to say which end of the range it falls on (if any).

As far as I understand it, even the single ducats - and to a lesser extent thalers - did not circulate that much; they were often used in trade, and as storage of wealth, but most normal people in their day-to-day life never needed that much money.
(Compare the 19th century sovereigns and crowns, which were essentially their descendants.)

IIRC, a few of the smaller states that got a privilege to issue their own money, but didn't really actually need it for anything, exercised it by issuing a bunch of large-denomination coins and selling them for large premiums to contemporary coin collectors.
So to an extent they really were the NCLTs of the day.

As for the "royalty" part, this might be somewhat true, for a very inclusive definition of "royalty". A better word might be "nobility".
What was true is that only the very rich people tended to have such coins (and, at that period of time, such people would mostly have been nobility) - but to an extent this is still true about NCLTs today.

No idea, to be honest.

Possibly they were made as fancy gifts, and/or as a convenient way to make new denominations without having to use new dies for them (see my comments above about weight and purity).
Perhaps they could partly be also made as NCLT-esque coinage to be sold to coin collectors (similarly to the above).

Come to think of it, what's the purpose behind making pattern coins in general? I have no idea, but it's probably similar.

I happen to know this one: it was a financial crisis, due to the problems of financing the Thirty Years' War.

It is known to history by the somewhat funny name of Kipper und Wipper.

A two-for-one reply: no idea about either.

In fact I can't recall having ever heard about either before seeing this thread today.

Essentially, this is what happened when a state was split (most commonly, between multiple heirs of the ruling family).

As far as I understand, the normal system was basically OriginalName-NewCapital; sometimes, the original name was (at least partly) the same as the capital of one of the new sub-states (having originated from it at some point in the past), resulting in duplicated names (as in your example).

In your particular example, it sounds like Ottingen split into Ottingen-Ottingen (kept old capital in Ottingen) and Ottingen-Wallenstein (new capital in Wallenstein), which in turn split into Ottingen-Wallenstein-Wallenstein (kept Wallenstein) and Ottingen-Wallenstein-Spielberg (new capital in Spielberg).
But since it was actually more complicated than that (I'm simplifying a bit), this particular case might well have happened differently.

As far as the monetary systems are concerned, if the split happened relatively recently, most likely, the coinage systems would have been fairly similar, with differences mostly in the parts identifying the state and ruler (monograms, legends, coats of arms).
In this case, absent any aggravating circumstances, the coins would probably have been accepted relatively easily, perhaps with some distrust for coming from a rival state.
If the split was older, and the monetary systems had time to diverge - see question 1 about weight and purity.

I don't know anything about this particular case, but most likely, basically the same as the above - the coins would mostly circulate separately, but if the monetary systems were similar, there would have been a slight bit of interchange.

I have no idea if they were, in fact, similar; since, IIRC, this was a fairly old split, they probably weren't.
However, even then, people would have been relatively more familiar with the other version's coins due to the proximity.

(Incidentally, while I doubt that it will ever actually come up, just in case, make sure not to confuse German Munster and Irish Munster.
The former is supposed to have an umlaut over the U, but you can hardly rely on it - context is better.
I have no idea if there are any coins of the latter, anyway.)

Would you consider yourself to be a European, a Pole, or a whatever-town-you're-actually-from-er?
Without any specific knowledge, I guess it's probably all three, and some others, in various proportion depending on the context.

The situation in this case would probably be similar - except that "German" wasn't really a thing prior to the 19th century.
OTOH, religion would also have been fairly important - i.e. Christian, and then (even more importantly) Catholic or Protestant or whatever (in Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, probably Lutheran... and perhaps Thuringian rather than Saxon, for that matter).

Realistically, the most common reference would probably actually be for the town or city (e.g. "Jenaer" - and this is apparently a real word - for someone from Jena).

In 1806 (and 1803, for that matter), the population at large would probably have been too worried about the assorted Napoleonic and/or Coalition armies walking around all over their land to bother about minor governmental changes.

That said, ignoring the overarching effect of the war itself (which had little to do with the dissolution of the Empire, except for being partly its cause), the governmental changes in question were probably indeed relatively minor (and much of what did happen was directly related to the war).


...Whew. *imagine a sweat-wiping smiley here*

There's probably much that you didn't ask, and much that I didn't say (and there's probably even something that was in the old version but didn't make it to this one).
But it's still a good long answer - probably longer than you expected

(And I reiterate - to a large extent this is just assorted application of common sense and some general historical knowledge. And even then, when I had no idea - and/or just guessed - I tried to say so directly.)

Excellent work january1may!




https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.or...0_10456.html
JUDENPFENNIGE

(Ger. for "Jews' Pennies"), small coins issued by Rhineland Jews. When Prussia stopped issuing small change in 1808, a serious lack of coins in the lower denominations was felt in the Rhineland. To overcome these difficulties, some Jews issued copper coins in denominations of Pfennig and Heller. As these were nonofficial issues, they gave them imaginary names, such as "Atribuo," "Halbac," or "Theler." These coins were somewhat lighter than the official coins. They bear fictitious designs, such as a coat of arms, a star, a wreath, a lion, a cock, and others, and carry the dates of 1703, 1740, 1807, 1809, 1810, 1818, 1819, 1820, and 1821. In 1821, however, the Prussian mint renewed the issue of small change, thereby putting a rather abrupt end to these illegal monetary enterprises. The authorities appointed a special unit, the Muenzpolizei ("coin police"), whose task was to confiscate these coins and to bring to court those who produced and distributed them. It is not known where they were struck. Some Jews seem to have made immense profit by handling them. One Jew from the city of Neuss is said to have made 54,000 florins profit. One single Westphalian customs office collected about 940 kilograms of such coins.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:

E. Fellner, Die Muenzen von Frankfurt am Main, 2 vols. (1896-1903), 624ff., 855.

As an addition to Question #2: Prussia for instance issued some Thaler coins and also the 2/3 Thaler denomination for trade with other German States and other countries. These issues were designated trade coins and did not circulate in Prussia, even though they were minted there.

#3: A Prussian Friedrich d'Or (Ducat) was equal to 5 Reichsthaler.

#4: Larger denominations were probably also intended for trade. Today, you wouldn't pay a can of coke with 100 copper pennies but rather with a dollar.

Thus, it was easier to bring a bag of Ducats than a cartload of Thalers. ;)

#5: It's been said already: Many of the gold strikes were 'fancy' gifts for the royalty or other high officials. Also, the silver strikes of Ducats were minted as gifts and commemorative metals.

#6: Kipper and Wipper have already been mentioned. In Brandenburg for instance, cities (in some cases without permission) started to mint their own coins around 1622.

#9:

Noble houses and families often had several lines (the house of Reuss for instance). Contracts of inheritence often resulted in several heirs inheriting different territories. In that way, German States sometimes were split up.

I'm glad I could add a small amount of info to the thread.




I for one like the way you did it. I learned a lot about German States because of it. If they were separate, I may have missed individual threads. And now future German States newbies can find a bunch of good info all in one thread!

I will be saving your questions and their answers to a word document for future reference. Thanks for asking the questions and thanks to january1may and Potsdam for the great answers!