Preliminary thoughts - iron coins during WWI
JohnZ
Posts: 1,732 ✭
I’ve posted these coins before, so I beg your indulgence. I’m currently preparing an article on these issues, and would very much appreciate any input whatsoever: good, bad, or ugly. These are just preliminary thoughts on the matter – a stream of consciousness if you will. I’ve left a great deal of my research out of this post - details such as mintage numbers and measurements will have to wait for now.
The coins in question are the Military Kopeks of 1916, and the German-Austrian Regency issues of 1917 and 1918, all minted by the German Empire.
Here’s what I’ve been able to discover about these coins. I’ll start with the German Military Kopeks, and I’ll be using the reference numbers commonly agreed upon by Polish numismatics: ON001 for the One Kopek, ON002 for the Two Kopek, and ON003 for the Three Kopeck.. “ON” in this case stands for “okupacja niemiecka”, or “German occupation.”
The fact that all of these coins are minted of iron is not unusual for the time. By the middle of World War One many European nations were minting coins of base metals such as iron, zinc, and aluminum. War tends to have a deleterious effect on the composition of coinage for two reasons: 1) metals such as copper and nickel are needed for the production of munitions, and 2) the civilian population, fearful of the devaluation of its currency, begins hoarding its money. One example of the first dynamic can be seen in the wartime “steel cent” and “silver nickel” issues of the US mint. An example of the second dynamic can be seen in the hoarding that went on during the American Civil War, leading to a desperate shortage of change in the late nineteenth century.
Things were no different in Europe during the “Great War”. The German Empire had found itself severely challenged on the Western Front, and consequently expending many more resources in their military campaigns than they had originally anticipated. By 1916, what copper and nickel they owned was being consumed by the war machine. In addition to this, hoarding had become widespread and rampant. German mints had even gone so far as to put a black finish on many of their silver coins so that they would appear to be made of a base metal. (Needless to say, the logic behind this tactic was dubious at best.)
On the Eastern Front, however, the German Empire was enjoying considerable success. The only nation that could challenge Germany’s military and political might was Russia, and to get to Russia, one needed only to step over one’s weak little neighbors. The soldiers fighting on the Western Front needed a way to conduct commerce with local farms and businesses, and herein lies the rationale for the minting of the Kopeks in question.
These German Kopeks are modeled, if you will, after their Russian counterparts. Not only do they utilize a Russian denomination, but their diameters are the same as their Russian “equivalents”. But here is where the similarities end. The Russian coins of the same period were minted on thick planchets of fine copper, and were no doubt hoarded with as much zeal as any other “good” coins of the time. So the German solution to this lack of small change was to mint highly debased versions of the same coins.
I believe that Germany’s purpose in minting these coins was not only to facilitate commerce, but to exercise a certain amount of economic control over its occupied territories. By forcing local populations to accept debased versions of its own currency, the Empire would assert its dominion in even the smallest of arenas. Imagine being forced to accept “Monopoly” money as legal tender…
The design of the coins is purely utilitarian in nature. Furthermore, clean, rust-free pieces are difficult to find, although one does generally find many examples exhibiting little wear. I can only conjecture that they had to be accepted by local merchants when dealing with the military, but after that they were simply ignored by the general population. They circulated throughout Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia.
The German-Austrian Regency issues exhibit very different socio-political characteristics.. In 1917, the German Empire had established a puppet kingdom in Poland – a regency with no regent, a kingdom with no king. This was merely an effort to consolidate political power in an area that Germany hoped to retain after the war. These coins served to propagandize the Empire’s military and political goals, hence the inscription “Królestwo Polskie”, or “Kingdom of Poland”. They are modeled on the German Pfennigs of the same period, with a denomination on the obverse, and a stylized eagle on the reverse.
Unlike the military Kopeks, these coins would have traded at an equal value to their German equivalents, both of which were struck of iron on the same size planchets. Krause (and several Polish authorities) list a number of exceedingly rare varieties, including proofs and mules, although it is now generally accepted that these pieces are impossible to locate, if they even existed at all. In fact, Fischer and £anowy have entirely removed them from the Katalog Monet Polskich 2003. My own personal experience bears this out. I’ve contacted well over thirty dealers in Poland looking specifically for these coins, and not a single one of them had ever even seen one except in catalogs.
Part of the frustration in researching any of the coins produced by the Stuttgart mint is that the mint was destroyed during WWII, and all of its records were irretrievably lost. Here is a pic of the Stuttgart mint – an artists rendition of the building during the nineteenth century. Pardon the resolution. I have a high-resolution scan of it that I will eventually use in my article.
German mints had been outfitted with steam-powered presses during the second half of the nineteenth century, and produced many finely-struck coins of various alloys of copper, silver and gold. However, these presses were insufficient to the task of minting coins out of a metal as hard as iron. Consequently, many, if not most German coins minted of iron during WWI exhibit weak strikes. It was only after the war that German mints began using electric motor-driven presses with much higher pressures.
The German-Austrian Regency issues are no exception. Many of them are weakly struck, particularly the “legend touching edge” variety of the 10 fenigów pieces. (See photo in above). I suspect that these coins were an early die trial. Once it was discovered that the coins would not strike well, the devices were made smaller, pulling them into the center of the coin, and thereby allowing the metal to flow more completely into the dies, (especially the obverse die). This particular variety may be rare, but is not impossible to locate. I own two of these coins, and both of them exhibit the same type of weak strike, in exactly the same areas.
The ON numbers for the German-Austrian Regency issues are as follows: 1 fenig = ON004, 5 fenigów = ON005, 10 fenigów = ON006, 20 fenigów = ON007.
My final article on all of these coins will include high-quality photos, several footnotes, and an extensive bibliography. These are merely initial musings.
I would like to finish this post with a personal footnote. My maternal grandparents grew up on a farm located about 100 kilometers from £wów, now in the Ukraine. My grandfather had been conscripted by the Austrian army to fight in the Eastern campaigns of WWI. These are the coins that he would have spent, along with the rest of my family. This personal attachment to the history of the region is what fueled my initial interest in these coins. As ugly as they are, I occasionally like to fantasize about the possibility that maybe my grandfather once held one of them in his hand…..
The coins in question are the Military Kopeks of 1916, and the German-Austrian Regency issues of 1917 and 1918, all minted by the German Empire.
Here’s what I’ve been able to discover about these coins. I’ll start with the German Military Kopeks, and I’ll be using the reference numbers commonly agreed upon by Polish numismatics: ON001 for the One Kopek, ON002 for the Two Kopek, and ON003 for the Three Kopeck.. “ON” in this case stands for “okupacja niemiecka”, or “German occupation.”
The fact that all of these coins are minted of iron is not unusual for the time. By the middle of World War One many European nations were minting coins of base metals such as iron, zinc, and aluminum. War tends to have a deleterious effect on the composition of coinage for two reasons: 1) metals such as copper and nickel are needed for the production of munitions, and 2) the civilian population, fearful of the devaluation of its currency, begins hoarding its money. One example of the first dynamic can be seen in the wartime “steel cent” and “silver nickel” issues of the US mint. An example of the second dynamic can be seen in the hoarding that went on during the American Civil War, leading to a desperate shortage of change in the late nineteenth century.
Things were no different in Europe during the “Great War”. The German Empire had found itself severely challenged on the Western Front, and consequently expending many more resources in their military campaigns than they had originally anticipated. By 1916, what copper and nickel they owned was being consumed by the war machine. In addition to this, hoarding had become widespread and rampant. German mints had even gone so far as to put a black finish on many of their silver coins so that they would appear to be made of a base metal. (Needless to say, the logic behind this tactic was dubious at best.)
On the Eastern Front, however, the German Empire was enjoying considerable success. The only nation that could challenge Germany’s military and political might was Russia, and to get to Russia, one needed only to step over one’s weak little neighbors. The soldiers fighting on the Western Front needed a way to conduct commerce with local farms and businesses, and herein lies the rationale for the minting of the Kopeks in question.
These German Kopeks are modeled, if you will, after their Russian counterparts. Not only do they utilize a Russian denomination, but their diameters are the same as their Russian “equivalents”. But here is where the similarities end. The Russian coins of the same period were minted on thick planchets of fine copper, and were no doubt hoarded with as much zeal as any other “good” coins of the time. So the German solution to this lack of small change was to mint highly debased versions of the same coins.
I believe that Germany’s purpose in minting these coins was not only to facilitate commerce, but to exercise a certain amount of economic control over its occupied territories. By forcing local populations to accept debased versions of its own currency, the Empire would assert its dominion in even the smallest of arenas. Imagine being forced to accept “Monopoly” money as legal tender…
The design of the coins is purely utilitarian in nature. Furthermore, clean, rust-free pieces are difficult to find, although one does generally find many examples exhibiting little wear. I can only conjecture that they had to be accepted by local merchants when dealing with the military, but after that they were simply ignored by the general population. They circulated throughout Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Russia.
The German-Austrian Regency issues exhibit very different socio-political characteristics.. In 1917, the German Empire had established a puppet kingdom in Poland – a regency with no regent, a kingdom with no king. This was merely an effort to consolidate political power in an area that Germany hoped to retain after the war. These coins served to propagandize the Empire’s military and political goals, hence the inscription “Królestwo Polskie”, or “Kingdom of Poland”. They are modeled on the German Pfennigs of the same period, with a denomination on the obverse, and a stylized eagle on the reverse.
Unlike the military Kopeks, these coins would have traded at an equal value to their German equivalents, both of which were struck of iron on the same size planchets. Krause (and several Polish authorities) list a number of exceedingly rare varieties, including proofs and mules, although it is now generally accepted that these pieces are impossible to locate, if they even existed at all. In fact, Fischer and £anowy have entirely removed them from the Katalog Monet Polskich 2003. My own personal experience bears this out. I’ve contacted well over thirty dealers in Poland looking specifically for these coins, and not a single one of them had ever even seen one except in catalogs.
Part of the frustration in researching any of the coins produced by the Stuttgart mint is that the mint was destroyed during WWII, and all of its records were irretrievably lost. Here is a pic of the Stuttgart mint – an artists rendition of the building during the nineteenth century. Pardon the resolution. I have a high-resolution scan of it that I will eventually use in my article.
German mints had been outfitted with steam-powered presses during the second half of the nineteenth century, and produced many finely-struck coins of various alloys of copper, silver and gold. However, these presses were insufficient to the task of minting coins out of a metal as hard as iron. Consequently, many, if not most German coins minted of iron during WWI exhibit weak strikes. It was only after the war that German mints began using electric motor-driven presses with much higher pressures.
The German-Austrian Regency issues are no exception. Many of them are weakly struck, particularly the “legend touching edge” variety of the 10 fenigów pieces. (See photo in above). I suspect that these coins were an early die trial. Once it was discovered that the coins would not strike well, the devices were made smaller, pulling them into the center of the coin, and thereby allowing the metal to flow more completely into the dies, (especially the obverse die). This particular variety may be rare, but is not impossible to locate. I own two of these coins, and both of them exhibit the same type of weak strike, in exactly the same areas.
The ON numbers for the German-Austrian Regency issues are as follows: 1 fenig = ON004, 5 fenigów = ON005, 10 fenigów = ON006, 20 fenigów = ON007.
My final article on all of these coins will include high-quality photos, several footnotes, and an extensive bibliography. These are merely initial musings.
I would like to finish this post with a personal footnote. My maternal grandparents grew up on a farm located about 100 kilometers from £wów, now in the Ukraine. My grandfather had been conscripted by the Austrian army to fight in the Eastern campaigns of WWI. These are the coins that he would have spent, along with the rest of my family. This personal attachment to the history of the region is what fueled my initial interest in these coins. As ugly as they are, I occasionally like to fantasize about the possibility that maybe my grandfather once held one of them in his hand…..
We ARE watching you.
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Comments
is that you end up being governed by inferiors. – Plato
The 1918 5 Fenigow on the top middle is in a PVC 2X2, but I don't guess it matters since the coin is iron. I'm not surprised either, as good coin products aren't available in Poland and they commonly use those Hartberger PVC holders.
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." -Luke 11:9
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." -Deut. 6:4-5
"For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; He will save us." -Isaiah 33:22
We ARE watching you.
We'll use our hands and hearts and if we must we'll use our heads.
You want how much?!!
NapoleonicMedals.org
(Last update 3/6/2007)
Once its complete, I will look for a publisher. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
In the long run, I plan to create a website devoted to information about Polish coins for English readers. But I have a great deal of research to do. It's at least a five-year project.
We ARE watching you.
Good job.
Clankeye
09/07/2006
Frank
They are a class organization, full of experts, and they span the globe.
Here is their website if you've never heard of them.Numismatics International
Their objectives speak volumes about them.
OBJECTIVES - The objectives are to encourage and promote the science of numismatics by specializing in areas and nations other than the United States of America; to cultivate fraternal relations among collectors and numismatic students; to encourage and assist new collectors; to foster the interest of youth in numismatics; to stimulate and advance affiliations among collectors and kindred organizations; to acquire, share, and disseminate numismatic knowledge.
My research on these coins will probably not be complete for several months to come. I'm currently trying to requisition records of bank transactions during WWI. It's a fascinating quest that no one else seems to be interested in, and the data are very diffucult to come by.
I also need professional photos. I think it's time to give the Insane Evil Genius a call...
We ARE watching you.
What actually caught my attention was the reference to Lvov. My mother's family hailed from Gros Most (I have no idea where that is, except that it was in the Lvov region), Sokol and Krystynopole. I know about Sokol, but maybe John can enlighten me about the other two places.
DPOTD
Ebay
Come on over ... to The Dark Side!