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// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Doppelkronensache say to its twin? "Double the trouble".

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A 20-mark gold piece of the German Empire. Coins of this denomination, known as Doppelkronen, were the object of the affair.

The Doppelkronensache ("double-crown affair") was the systematic reduction in weight of German imperial gold coins carried out between Hamburg and Lübeck in about 1875–1877.[1][2] Removing metal from genuine coins and issuing them at full value violated section 150 of the Reich Criminal Code.[3] The affair was settled out of court in January 1878 amid international monetary tension,[4] when Germany's recent currency reform was still considered insecure.[5] Those behind it were never identified.[6] Because the manipulated coins stayed above the minimum weight and looked unremarkable on their own,[7] the loss fell to the Reich under the rules for ordinary wear.[8][9] Günter Pusback and Clas Abels rank it among the worst blows to the Hamburg mint's standing in its early imperial years.[1][9]

Method

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A Doppelkrone weighed 7.965 g, its least current weight, the floor below which it started losing value, was 7.9251 g, and the minting tolerance was 2.5 thousandths, about 20 mg.[8] Sweating the coins in bags took off 20 to 35 mg a pass, which still left them above the least current weight and unremarkable one at a time.[10][7] In Hamburg's forwarding and stevedoring trade, the circuit of loading charges and wage payments let the same coins go through repeatedly.[2] At some 25 mg (seven pfennigs) a pass, roughly 180,000 passes since 1875 were reported to have yielded four to five kilograms of fine gold, worth 11,000 to 14,000 marks.[8][7]

Discovery

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The shortfall came to light at Lübeck in October 1877.[7] The Wippe, a tipping lever balance,[2] in use there since the winter of 1875–76, was set to the least current weight, and the coins passed.[7] Only the reweighing of 1,912 Doppelkronen from one depositor revealed the manipulation: though of different years of issue, their weights clustered unusually narrowly.[7][9] Ordinary wear varies widely.[11] On the contemporary assumption that a coin took fifty years in circulation to reach the least current weight, four years account for only a few milligrams.[12]

Settlement and aftermath

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On 31 January 1878 the matter was settled out of court. The coins complained of were taken back at face value and the affair kept confidential.[6] Neither the individuals nor the firms responsible became known, and the official files of the Reichsbank branch are also lost, having been burned in 1902 in a routine destruction of records.[13]

The imperial judicature acts also ended the Higher Court of Appeal of the Free Hanseatic Cities at Lübeck on 1 October 1879.[14] According to Adolf Hertz, the public prosecutor's empire-wide duty to prosecute[15] would have made "a comparable settlement more difficult".[16]

The affair coincided with the Hamburg mint’s first years of imperial coin production. In their histories of the institution, Günter Pusback and Clas Abels present the Doppelkronensache as one of the gravest blows to the mint’s standing during this early period.[1][9]

Karl Helfferich, who wrote in 1898 that the German monetary reform had not yet been secured in 1877/78.

Monetary context

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The settlement came at a time of international monetary tension: in 1878 the Bland–Allison Act forced silver coinage in the United States and the Paris monetary conference met on currency questions.[4] A scandal over manipulated imperial gold would have put further strain on the young German gold currency.[5] Helfferich held that the reform "war […] 1877/78 noch nicht gesichert" ("was not yet secured in 1877/78").[5] Silver released by the demonetisation of the old silver coinages could only be sold at a loss on a falling world market, and sales stopped in 1879.[17] By the end of 1878 gold coins of about 1.67 billion marks face value had been struck.[18]

Under section 9 of the coinage law of 1871 the Reich bore the losses of ordinary wear, which could not be reliably distinguished from deliberate weight reduction.[8] Melted into bar gold, the abrasion could be exchanged at the Reichsbank for banknotes at the statutory rate of 1,392 marks per pound fine;[19] the Reich thus took back, in Abels's words, "gold from its own manipulated coins".[9]

References

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  1. 1 2 3 Pusback, Günter (1979). "Die Hamburger Münzstätte von 1874 bis heute". Norddeutsches Jahrbuch für Münzkunde und verwandte Gebiete (in German). 1: 169–198.
  2. 1 2 3 Schneider, Konrad (1983). Hamburgs Münz- und Geldgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Einführung der Reichswährung. Beiträge zur Geschichte Hamburgs (in German). Vol. 22. Koblenz: Numismatischer Verlag Gerd Martin Forneck. pp. 10–14, esp. 59–68.
  3. ↑ "Strafgesetzbuch für das Deutsche Reich vom 15. Mai 1871". Reichsgesetzblatt (in German). 1871. § 150, pp. 127–128.
  4. 1 2 United States, "An Act to Authorize the Coinage of the Standard Silver Dollar, and to Restore Its Legal-Tender Character", 28 February 1878, United States Statutes at Large 20 (1878): 25–26 (p. 26); International Monetary Conference, International Monetary Conference Held in Paris, in August, 1878 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879).
  5. 1 2 3 Helfferich, Karl (1898). Deutschlands Münzreform und die Silberentwertung: Einige Worte über bimetallistische Geschichtschreibung (in German). Stuttgart: A. Bonz & Comp.
  6. 1 2 Heinrich Petersen, ed., "Vermerk, betreffend die Sache Littr. S." (2 February 1878), in Materialien zur Geschichte des Lübeckischen Geldverkehrs, Zweites Heft: Abschriften und Aufzeichnungen 1875 bis 1879, no. 18 (Lübeck, January 1927); Nachlass Heinrich Petersen.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Heinrich Petersen, ed., "Gutachtliche Aeusserung, betreffend die im Goldeingange Lübecker Kassen beobachteten Mindergewichte an Doppelkronen" (14 December 1877), in Materialien zur Geschichte des Lübeckischen Geldverkehrs, Zweites Heft: Abschriften und Aufzeichnungen 1875 bis 1879, no. 17 (Lübeck, January 1927), Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, digital copy.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "Gesetz, betreffend die Ausprägung von Reichsgoldmünzen vom 4. Dezember 1871". Reichsgesetzblatt (in German). 1871. §§ 2–4, 7, 9, pp. 404–406.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Abels, Clas (1975). "100 Jahre Münzbetrieb in der Norderstraße". In Hamburgische Münze (ed.). 650 Jahre hamburgisches Münzwesen: Eine Festschrift (in German). Hamburg: Hamburgische Münze. pp. 29–39.
  10. ↑ Jevons, W. Stanley (1875). Money and the Mechanism of Exchange. New York: D. Appleton. p. 114.
  11. ↑ "Ueber Münzen-Abnutzung," Dingler’s Polytechnisches Journal 252 (1884): 298–300.
  12. ↑ —i. (1885). "Abnutzung der Goldmünzen". Die Gartenlaube (in German) (11): 188.
  13. ↑ Prehn, Joachim (1994). "Aktenordnung und Aktenvernichtung bei einer norddeutschen Reichsbank-Zweiganstalt: Drei Verzeichnisse aus Lübeck, 1902–1922". Bankhistorisches Archiv (Miszelle) (in German). 20 (2): 71–73. The three registers: Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 2501/20130 (Deutsche Reichsbank), Zweiganstalt Lübeck, Registraturangelegenheiten, digital copy.
  14. ↑ Staatsarchiv Bremen, "Oberappellationsgericht der vier freien Städte Deutschlands (Bestand)", collection description, Archivportal-D; Einführungsgesetz zum Gerichtsverfassungsgesetze vom 27. Januar 1877, art. 1, Reichsgesetzblatt 1877, 77.
  15. ↑ "Strafprozeßordnung vom 1. Februar 1877". Reichsgesetzblatt (in German). 1877. § 152, pp. 253, 282.
  16. ↑ Hertz, Adolf (1935). Die Geschichte des Legalitätsprinzips (in German). Borna-Leipzig: Robert Noske. pp. 40–42.
  17. ↑ Andrew D. White to William M. Evarts, 25 June 1879, no. 177, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1879 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879), 386–388.
  18. ↑ Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, vol. 1 (Berlin: Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht, 1880), 90, table "Ausgeprägt für Reichs- und Privatrechnung, bezw. eingezogen für Reichsrechnung".
  19. ↑ "Bankgesetz vom 14. März 1875". Reichsgesetzblatt (in German). 1875. § 14, pp. 177, 182.

Further reading

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  • Jaeger, Kurt; Sonntag, Michael Kurt (2025). Die deutschen Münzen seit 1871 (in German) (29th, revised and expanded ed.). Regenstauf: Battenberg. ISBN 978-3-86646-265-6.
  • Liszt, Franz von (1897). "Strafbare Handlungen an Geld". Lehrbuch des deutschen Strafrechts (in German) (8th, revised ed.). Berlin: J. Guttentag. pp. 552–558.
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