Pfennig
The pfennig or penny is a former German coin or note, which was an official currency from the 9th century until the introduction of the euro in 2002. While a valuable coin during the Middle Ages, it lost its value through the years and was the minor coin of the Mark currencies in the German Reich, West Germany and East Germany, and the reunified Germany until the introduction of the euro. Pfennig was also the name of the subunit of the Danzig mark and the Danzig gulden in the Free City of Danzig.
Overview
Name
The word Pfennig can be traced back to the 8th century and also became known as the Penning, Pannig , Pfennic, Pfending and by other names, e.g. in Prussia until 1873, Pfenning. The -ing- or -inc suffix was used, in addition to -ung, the formation of affiliation substantives and also appears in other coin denominations, for example in the schilling. Beyond that, its origin has not been clarified, but an early borrowing from the Latin pondus is possible. According to an 1848 Leipzig trade lexicon the name pfennig was "originally the general name of every coin in Germany, which is supposed to be derived from the hollow coins or bracteatess, because these had the shape of a pan"."The word Pfennig is etymologically related to the English penny, the Swedish penning, which was also model for the Finnish penni, the Estonian penn, the Polish fenig, the Lithuanian word for money pinigai and the pfenig of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The /pf/ rather than /p/ in both pronunciation and spelling is a result of the High German consonant shift or second Germanic sound shift which affected the High German dialects of what is now southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria. High German dialects form the basis for modern Standard German.
Related currencies
The pfennig was the progenitor of a whole series of later coin denominations, which became parts or multiples of the later pfennig. These include the groschen, Angster, Albus, Witte, Rappen, Stäbler, Heller, Schwaren etc.There were also "light pfennigs", "good pfennigs" or "custom pfennigs", which had this name on the coin. Some types of pfennig were given special names in the vernacular, such as the Erfurt "coffin pfennig".
Sign
As a currency sign a variation of the minuscule letter 'd' with a swash for 'denarius' in script, with its swash going from ascender to baseline or descender level, thus forming a distinct symbol: ₰. The symbol was also used for the denarius or equivalent units in other languages like denier in French or denario in Italian.The pfennig symbol has nearly fallen out of use since the 1950s, with the demise and eventual abolition of the Reichsmark with its Reichspfennig, as well as the abolition of Kurrent by the Nazis on 3 January 1941, thus making it increasingly cryptic as familiarity with Kurrent script has decreased since that time. The symbol is encoded in Unicode at. In some system fonts, the glyph of the symbol is mistakenly drawn as a Pf letters sequence or ligature, as Pf or was used as an abbreviation for Pfennig.
Unicode has, a square combination of ペニヒ, Japanese for "pfennig", for compatibility with earlier Japanese character sets.
History
Middle Ages
Charlemagne established, in the so-called Carolingian coin standard, that from a Carolingian cat=no of silver, 240 coins were to be minted. The coin was called in the Latin language of the time, a denarius after the old Roman coin. From this coin evolved later the French Denier and the Italian denaro. The Arabic word dinar can also be traced back to the Latin word denarius. In the Old High German language, the denarius was already called the pfennig at the time of Charlemagne. In North German and Dutch-speaking countries it was later called a Penning and in England the penny. The term paenig for the Roman denarius first appeared in England around 765, when King Offa had denarii struck out of silver based on the Carolingian model. This explains the abbreviation "d" as in denarius, which was used for the "old" penny in the United Kingdom until 1971. The early pfennig weighed around 1.3g to 2g, its weight tending to steadily decrease over the centuries. The widespread fluctuations in the weight of the same pfennigs were partly due to the manufacturing process, with the heavier pfennig specimens being sought out by private individuals in accordance with Gresham's law. At that time and even partly up to modern times, it was the total weight of a certain number of similar pfennigs that had to be right for larger payments, a practice that tended to promote deviating exchange rates between smaller and larger coin denominations and which found its climax in the Kipper and Wipper era; for example, the terms Old weights and measures #Schock, Schock or "pound sterling".From the 8th to the 13th century, the pfennig consisted of high-quality silver, and was the only denomination in circulation, other units being used purely as arithmetic units, and it thus had a high purchasing power. As a result, this era is also called the Pfennigzeit in numismatics. Only very rarely were half-pfennigs minted, which were also known as obole or scherf.
Around 1200, the pfennig was the largest and only German silver denomination, apart from imported foreign gold and silver coins. Smaller denominations were created by cutting the coins in half or quarters, producing something called hacksilver, which was very easy to do with the one-sided thin hollow pfennigs or strubben, which were then referred to as bracteates from the 17th century. The "change" that was often still required for price and quantity equalization by buyers and sellers on the city markets were small amounts of natural produce and goods that were included in the overall purchase process.
Around 1200, the different mint lords of the Holy Roman Empire minted their regional pfennigs to very different standards in terms of gross and fine weights, because the German kingdom handed over minting rights or did not enforce them as a uniform imperial standard consistently. As a result, many regional pfennigs with different exchange rates arose over time. Somes coins had a black tint due to the large addition of copper, and so a distinction was made between white pfennigs and black pfennigs. A well-known example is the Haller Pfennig, which was later legally defined as a Heller or haller in subsequent imperial coinage regulations as a separate denomination valued at two to a pfennig until the 19th century e.g. in Bavaria. Even the early hellers had a noticeable addition of copper, so that the heller very quickly became the first German "pure" copper coin.
The pfennigs of the Schinderling period, the black pfennigs, were minted from 1457 mainly in southern Germany, especially in Austria and Bavaria, with almost no silver. The so-called Böse Halser of this time essentially consisted of a copper-tin alloy. The period of the so-called Schinderling ended with the phasing out of the 5-lot pfennigs in 1460. The black pfennigs undermined confidence in Austria's silver currency for a long time.
File:Schüsselpfennig, Schweiz, St. Gallen, CNG.jpg|thumb|Schüsselpfennig, St. Gallen, clipped
For the successful introduction of the silver groschen currency, which replaced the regional pfennig, sufficient coins of lower denomination had to be available. The silver-rich Saxon dukes, for example, had hollow pfennigs and hollow hellers minted at Gotha and Langensalza to prescribed coinage ordinances. However, the constant reduction in the silver content of the groschen meant that new ordinances to reduce the silver content of the pfennigs that the cities sometimes minted themselves.
The Schüsselpfennig minted from 1374 to the 18th century is a concave pfennig, stamped on one side only, that was minted from 1374 onwards, and was so called due to its minting technique. It was created by stamping using one upper die only onto a larger planchet. As a result, the rim of the coin was pressed upwards into the shape of a bowl or plate.
The forerunners of the Schüsselpfennig were the one-sided silver Engelpfennigs and Lilienpfennig of the Free Imperial City Strasbourg and the Trier pfennigs, which were being minted as early as the beginning of the 14th century. They are so-called ewiger Pfennige, since unlike most bracteates, they did not have to be exchanged regularly for a fee.
The so-called Palatine Weckeler, named after its depiction of a lozenged shield or heraldic lozenge, was minted from about 1390. From the 15th century, a characteristic feature of the pfennig was its curved shape and a prominent circle of beads, which surrounded the coin image. The pearl circle does not occur in the later Schüsselpfennig minted from the 16th to the 18th century.
Pricing examples from the Saxon-Thuringian region
Krug gives the following examples of what could be bought for pfennigs in regions of Saxony and Thuringia:The pfennigs concerned were usually the coins from the Freiberg state mint.
Modern period
17th and 18th centuries
By the late 17th century, the pfennigs had lost most of their value. The last pfennig coins containing traces of silver are rarities minted in 1805. Effectively, by the end of the 17th century the pfennig had been reduced to a pure copper coin. In the 18th century, some German mints minted copper and billon pfennigs at around the same time. From the middle of the 18th century, however, the proportion of billon coins compared to pure copper pfennig coins tended to decrease, which was also reflected in the 2 to 4 pfennig coins. The last silver-containing 1 pfennig coins with the designation "Pfenig" were minted in Germany in the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld from 1808 to 1811 and date stamped 1808 and are rare. Even the copper pfennigs were not all of the same value. Bremen therefore called its pfennigs sware penninge for which the common name Schwaren prevailed.Some renowned coins made of copper are the Häller or Haller pfennig of Schwäbisch Hall, some centuries later called Heller, and minted throughout the country, and the Kreuzer, minted in Austria, Switzerland, and some regions of Upper Germany.