Kreuzer – "Zwanziger" (twenty kreuzer coin), Merano (Meinhard I to III, until 1363)
Vierer kreuzer, no year, Hall
Kreuzer – "Etschkreuzer" coin, Hall, Sigmund (1446 to 1490)
As trade and commerce flourished in the High Middle Ages, the need for coins with a higher nominal value arose. Large transactions requiring a larger unit of account than the pfennig were settled by paying with pfennigs by weight or with pfennigs and silver bars. Bishop Wolfgers of Passau’s travel bill for 1202–03 provides a typical example: He traveled with unminted silver, which he exchanged for local coins to pay with.
Larger coinage units were minted in Tyrol, where Count Meinhard II had a multiple pfennig struck at the mint at Merano from 1271 to 1274. The first such coins, adlergroschen, were followed by kreuzer, so dubbed because two crosses were depicted on the obverse. The Etschtaler kreuzer (Netsch, a term derived from this coin, is still an expression used for money in the vernacular), also called a zwanziger (a twenty) because it was equivalent to 20 Veronese denars, became the model for numerous German and Italian coins.
In the second half of the 15th century, the pfennig was gradually superseded by the Tyrolean kreuzer, with the relation of four Vienna pfennigs to the Tyrolean kreuzer establishing itself by and by. The valuation of the Rhenish gold gulden at 60 kreuzer and 240 pfennigs finally laid the foundation for a standardization of the monetary system in parallel to the evolution of the Habsburg empire. From 1510, the pfennig and the kreuzer were integrated into a single monetary system.
Unlike Tyrol, the Austrian dominions retained the pfennig. For large-value payments, they resorted to the Prague groschen, a large silver coin widespread alongside the Tyrolean kreuzer at the beginning of the 14th century. The basis for minting this coin, which was patterned on the French tournois (worth some 12 denars), was the rich silver deposits at Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg). In 1326, the Prague groschen was equivalent to roughly 7 Vienna pfennigs.
After weathering the schinderling crisis, Frederick III (1452 to 1492) attempted to introduce medium-sized silver coins and, by resuming the minting of gold coins, to create a more complex nominal value system with higher-value coins, but his efforts failed. The inferior Austrian coins could not hold their own against the high-quality competition from abroad.
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Prague groschen, Kuttenberg, Johann von Luxemburg (1310 to 1346)
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Representation of the day-to-day life of Kuttenberg miners, Kuttenberger Kantonial 1492
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Hungarian gold gulden,
Matthias Corvinus (1458 to 1490)
Judenburg gold gulden,
Albrecht III (1356 to 1395)
Gold, which had fallen into disuse as a coinage metal for centuries, experienced a revival in Europe from the mid-13th century, when business and commerce began to flourish and trade with the Orient was reinvigorated during the Crusades. In the 14th and 15th centuries, gold coins gained ground next to the larger silver coins. The first such gold currency was minted in the large Italian trade centers Florence, Genoa and Venice. Above all Hungarian ducats and Rhenish gulden, which were among the numerous coins minted in imitation of the Florentine florin and the Venetian ducat, circulated as trade coins in Austria.
The first Austrian gulden were minted on the order of Duke Albert II (1330 to 1358), Duke Rudolf IV (1358 to 1365) and Duke Albert III (1365 to 1395) at the Judenburg mint. At the time, Judenburg was a leader in trade with Italy, which is why it was especially interested in minting gulden. The minters of Judenburg had access to gold mined from the nearby Hohe Tauern mountains. At the end of the 14th century, the archbishops of Salzburg also minted gold coins, which, however, did not become as widespread as a means of payment. Even the gold coins minted 100 years later by Frederick III, who modeled coins on Hungarian ducats and Rhenish gulden, and by Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol (1446 to 1490) could not prevail against the foreign coins.
Nevertheless, the renewed effort to mint gold coins in Austria marked an important step for Austrian coinage. The decisive impulse emanated from Tyrol, where Archduke Sigismund introduced a new monetary system and laid the foundation for modern coinage with a large silver denomination that was to evolve into the thaler.
