Schwaz silver mine at Falkenstein mountain, Schwazer Bergbuch 1556, Viennese edition
Pfundner, no year, Hall
Sechser, Hall, Ferdinand I
(1521 to 1527)
Half guldiner, 1484, Hall,
Archduke Sigmund
(1446 to 1490)
Even after Tyrol’s unification with Austria in 1363, it retained coinage sovereignty. The monetary crisis in the neighboring countries Bavaria, Salzburg and Austria had caused the value of the kreuzer to decline in Tyrol in the first half of the 15th century. It took Archduke Sigismund (1446 to 1490) many years to stabilize the currency fully. The successful consolidation of the currency between 1450 and 1460 represented the basis for a modernization of the monetary system that was to have a lasting effect throughout Europe.
Sigismund’s motive for shoring up Tyrol’s monetary system was to benefit from the rapid increase in north-south trade in Europe and the prosperity in its wake. Efforts to mint gold coins in the face of heavy foreign competition had failed, as Tyrol had no gold deposits, so Sigismund opted for a reform strategy focused on substantially increasing the amounts of silver mined at Schwaz from the mid-1470s. Rather than being sent to Venice for minting or funneled into repaying the debts incurred by ruler’s profligate lifestyle at court, the silver was used to strike coins in Tyrol.
In 1477 Sigismund transferred the mint from Merano to Hall and began to produce a coin called pfundner tariffed at 12 kreuzer and patterned on large Venetian coins. The heavy silver coins issued in Venice from 1472 were originally labeled “lira tron” after the reigning doge and then referred to as “grossoni” or, if they bore the portrait of the sovereign, as “testone.” The Tyrolean pfundner was the first coin with an accurate, lifelike representation of the ruler minted in German-speaking countries. Archduke Sigismund had a coin with half the value of the pfundner, a sechser, minted as well. In 1484, the mint began to produce a silver coin worth half a gulden – the half guldiner, or half guldengroschen.
Guldiner, 1486, Hall,
Archduke Sigmund (1446 to 1490)
Guldiner, 1504 – Rübentaler coin, Leonhard von Keutschach (1495 to 1519)
Thaler coin, Vienna,
Ferdinand I (1521 to 1564)
The Tyrolean archduke’s coinage reform centered on the issue of a guldiner in 1486. Large quantities of the new coin, also known as a guldengroschen or as unzialis because of its weight (1 ounce, or 31.5 grams), were struck. This coin, which was conceived as a counterpart to the Rhenish gold gulden, completed the series of silver denominations and was soon widely imitated. Salzburg’s Archbishop Leonhard von Keutschach (1495 to 1519) was the first to follow Sigismund’s example and minted large silver coins termed Rübentaler, probably in the mint at Hall. Around 1500, the rulers of Saxony began to strike a silver gulden, and around 1520, the counts of Schlick, owners of the Joachimsthal mine in Bohemia, began to produce an abundance of guldengroschen. These coins’ epithet – Joachimsthaler – is the origin of the word thaler (a name that lives on in today’s dollar) and soon came to designate any large silver coin.
The new heavy silver coins minted in Tyrol were first referred to as gulden in Austria. In the larger sphere of European money transactions, however, the first gulden struck at the mint at Hall played a comparatively minor role, as the thaler soon began to develop independently. Nevertheless, Tyrol had created the basis for the transition to modern coinage by striking a heavy silver coin suited to the needs of a growing economy and international financial transactions.
Hall in Tirol with Sparberegg mint, Schwazer Bergbuch 1556
Rollers for roller milling and unfinished sheet metal strip showing the obverse and reverse of a Rudolf II (1575 to 1612) double thaler, Hall, 1604
Hall in Tyrol became one of Europe’s most important mints in the Late Middle Ages. While only about a third of the silver mined at Schwaz was actually turned into coins at the mint at Hall (two-thirds of the silver was exported), the variety of denominations – mostly small silver coins – and the amount of coins struck was quite impressive. The mint produced ample revenue for the country’s ruler, Archduke Sigismund, which he desperately needed to finance his lavish lifestyle at court. An anecdote bears witness to the prince’s keen interest in coinage: Shortly before his death, Sigismund asked for a bowl with 400 guldiners to be brought so he could revel in the feel of silver one last time ("weil sein Gnad noch einmal in ain silber greifen wolt").
Nowhere in Austria was mint management as efficient and dedicated as in Hall, where the sovereign was in firm control. The Hall mint stood out not just for its novel and particularly well-crafted coins, it also pioneered new minting techniques. New production methods – a new method of treating the sheet metal from which the blanks are punched and a new foundry – improved the quality of the coins and were more economical. In the mid-1500s first experiments with minting machinery were conducted, and in 1570 hydropowered machinery went into operation at Hall, which consequently became a model for numerous other European mints.
