New Kreuzer..

Kurt4

Another "cheap" coin I picked up. Reverse is same. I love all the open fields on this coin.



It's a big thick heavy coin too. Anybody have any history? Thanks.

tbirde56

A very interesting time in Europe! Revolution by the masses and beginnings of German unification without Austrian influence:

Timeline
1846-1849: Economic depression was spread throughout Europe. It was marked by rising food prices after a poor harvest and the recession that followed the industrial expansionin the early 1840s.

Overview
The Austrian government was compelled to declare a constitutional state by decree. This was probably an attempt to bypass the revolution from below by giving the people what they wanted from above. A bicameral legislature was established, the lower house being elected by popular suffrage. The vote was given to all adult males except domestics. There was even ministerial responsibility. But the Constitution satisfied no one.

Failure of the Forty-eighters
Despite the harsh repression, the 1848 revolutions were not a complete failure from a civil liberties perspective. While constitutional government was abolished in the Hapsburg Empire and in most of the German and Italian states as the revolutions collapsed, constitutions, albeit of a highly-limited nature, survived in formerly absolutist Prussia and Sardinia, liberal constitutional reforms (usually including such reforms as press freedom and an expanded suffrage) survived in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, and universal manhood suffrage was maintained in France (although rendered rather nugatory until after 1860 by election-rigging). Finally, in many ways the 1848 revolutions established a civil liberties agenda that was to play a major, and sometimes dominant role in European domestic politics for the next seventy years.

Summary

Hungarian 1848 revolution

Kurt4

Thanks Brad. That is a ton of history. Looks like I have a little investigating to do this weekend. Off to the History section at the second hand bookstore (which is usually a bad thing for my checking account).