Old Money Registry

Types / 1920

5 Pfennig, Stadt Freiberg, 1920

Gutschein über Fünf Pfennig, Stadt Freiberg i. Sa.

common Grabowski/Mehl 379

What was happening

Freiberg is the great silver-mining town of Saxony. Silver ore found here around 1168 opened up the Erzgebirge — the "Ore Mountains" — and made the town, for centuries, the richest and largest in the Saxon margraviate. In 1765 Freiberg founded the Bergakademie, the world's oldest still-existing university of mining and metallurgy, where Alexander von Humboldt and the poet Novalis studied and where the elements indium and germanium were later discovered.

So when the town printed its own small change in the inflation years, the natural emblem was the miner. One face of this 5-Pfennig note shows a Bergmann in working dress pushing a laden ore cart — a Hund or Hunt, the miner's word for the wagon — marked "5", with the silhouette of Freiberg behind him, over "Fünf Pfennig · Stadt Freiberg" and the note that it would be redeemed by all the town's treasuries. Printed by the lithographic works of Ernst Lange in Freiberg.

The other face is the formal voucher: "Gutschein über Fünf Pfennig", flanked by two Gothic saint-and-town figures, valid in the district of the town of Freiberg in Saxony initially until 30 September 1921, issued by "Der Stadtrat zu Freiberg i. Sa." over the mayor's signature.

1 copy in the collection