World Coins Chat: Germany (1871-1948, GDR and GFR)

3 posts
I'll make this shorter and more too the point than the French one, which I simply knew too much about! 0:)

Germany, or the Federal Republic of Germany (abbreviated GFR) (Bundesrepulik Deutschland, BRD) is a nation in central Europe bordering the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czechia, Poland and Denmark. It has a population of some 82 millions (rounded) as of December 2017.


German horizontal tricolour flag, used by the GFR since 1949.

History
Pre-Unification: Germania, the HRE and Unification (Antiquity - 1871)

(Future link to German States WCC(s) here)

The history of the region known as Germany throughout the ages is first documented by the Romans, whose expansion attempts into 'Germania' were thwarted by their defeat by German chieftain Arminius at the Battle of Teutoburger Wald in 9 AD. The area remained on the frontier of the Roman Empire for the next few centuries until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD by invading 'barbarian' hordes of Vandals. Over the next few hundred years, Germanic tribes migrated throughout Europe, settling in neighbouring regions and interbreeding with local populations, such as the Anglo-Saxons in 'Angleland' (England), and the Franks in France. Charlemagne's empire based around Aachen fell after his 814 AD death, and the eastern third of his empire (East Francia) evolved into a multitude of states held together by a patchwork political entity known as the Holy Roman Empire (Heiliges Römisches Reich).


The Holy Roman Empire; note the sheer amount of small fiefdoms in modern day Germany.

The German States remained more feudal and divisive than the rest of pre-Renaissance Europe in the Middle Ages, owing to their political status; there emerged some stronger nations and factions that temporarily exhibited dominance over smaller states both within and outside the HRE, such as the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century; and later the rise of Habsburg Austria from the 15th century onwards, to become the dominant state in the HRE as the Habsburg dynasty married into crowns and titles outside of the HRE as well. The German States were the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, beginning with Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517. From 1618 to 1648 a series of conflicts known collectively as the Thirty Years War swept across Europe, with a lot of the fighting done in what is today Germany. The resulting Peace of Westphalia set the political scene within the HRE for roughly the next century.

In the 18th century sporadic wars between the Great Powers were fought with German states and people on both sides; the European theatres of these wars was usually centred around the rivalry between Habsburg Austria, the traditional dominant state within the HRE, and the new rising power of Prussia under the House of Hohenzollern. The Wars of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) and the Seven Years War (1756-63) both centred around the two states' dispute over Silesia. The German states remained mostly autocratic monarchies as the Enlightenment progressed, and when revolution broke out in France in 1789, Austria, Prussia and a multitude of conservative European monarchies formed various coalitions to combat the spread of first liberal republicanism, then Bonapartist ambitions.


The German Confederation (red outline) formed after the Napoleonic Wars at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Note how both Austria and Prussia own territory outside the Confederation.

The Napoleonic Wars and French domination of German states under the Confederation of the Rhine (Napoleon's re-organisation of hundreds of German states after the dissolution of the HRE in 1806) lead to the formation of ideas of German nationalism among German speaking peoples in Central Europe; and after the defeat of Napoleon, in 1815 the Congress of Vienna kept the 'simplified' design of 'only' 39 states in a new 'German Confederation', where Austria and Prussia would share influence over the smaller states. However, Prussian initiatives like trade and customs unions with the German States (the Zollverein) and rapid industrialisation meant Austria was effectively estranged from her German interests by contrast; this became more apparent in the revolutions of 1848, when the crown of a unified Germany was offered to, but rejected by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who abhorred the proposed liberal constitution and it's 'crown from the gutter'.


Depiction of the 'Springtime of Nations' in 1848; the first appearance and contextual usage of the German tricolour flag, representative of liberal republicanism in a nation (as in France and Italy today).

The appointment of Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister in 1862 by King Wilhelm I of Prussia saw Bismarck's savvy Realpolitik orchestrate an 1864 war with Austria against Denmark for the German populations of Schleswig and Holstein; then a war for local hegemony against Austria in 1866 to force all pro-Austrian states in the now defunct German Confederation to join a new 'North German Confederation' (Norddeutscher Bund) under Prussian domination. Subsequently Austria refocused her foreign policy towards internal struggle, becoming a dual monarchy with political equality offered to the Hungarians in it's empire, while Prussia focused on unifying the German states without the German speaking regions owned by the Habsburgs. The southern German states were drawn into the Prussian orbit in a war against France in 1870-71, where the increased industrialisation and superior organisation of the German armies saw a triumph against the French at Sedan. Before the capitulation of Paris in 1871, the German princes gathered at the Palace of Versailles' Hall of Mirrors to proclaim the unification of the German Empire under Prussian King Wilhelm I.


The proclamation of the German Empire in 1871 at the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, as depicted by Anton von Werner in 1885.

The many states of the Holy Roman Empire had irregular coinage that became standardised at various different dates, usually denominated in pfennigs, groschen, schillings, (vereins)thalers, among many others. In the aftermath of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, many German states entered into a sort of monetary union with each other, facilitating trade (setting monetary standards for thaler coins was common in the mid 19th century). The German Mark currency (Goldmark) was only introduced after unification in 1871. More will be available on pre-unification coinage in a future German States WCC.


The German Empire: Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras (1871-1918)

In 1871, the balance of power in Europe had been disturbed greatly by the appearance of a newly unified, heavily industrialised nation with a high literacy and birth rates. Thus Bismarck undertook the formation of defensive alliances with Russia and Austria-Hungary (the Dreikaiserbund) in 1873-79, and he designed a delicate balance of power in Europe reaching agreements with Italy in 1882 and the United Kingdom in 1887. He also orchestrated (for German prestige), the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to decide on the fate of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, and in 1884 the Berlin Conference to formalise colonial claims in the Scramble for Africa. Despite his efforts, he failed to reconcile with France, due to resentment over the taking of the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine (Elsaß-Lothreign) in 1871. There had been a war scare with France as early as 1875, so in response Bismarck placed France in a 'diplomatic quarantine', to ensure France could not find another Great Power ally. He also famously challenged Catholic influence in Southern Germany (Kulturkampf), which like the Grand Duchies and Kingdoms of the Empire, maintained their own regional monarchs subject to the Kaiser in Berlin.

Kaiser Wilhelm I 'der Große' died in 1888; his son Friedrich III died just 99 days later, and by the end of 1888 (the Year of Three Emperors), Wilhelm II, an inexperienced and headstrong young man, was Emperor (Kaiser) of the new ascendant power in Central Europe. Wilhelmine era foreign policy was a lot more hostile than Bismarck's carefully drawn up balance of power had been; the 'Iron Chancellor' himself was dismissed in 1890. Wilhelm dreamed of Germany's 'place in the sun' (a colonial empire; Weltpolitik), but since Bismarck had not been interested in colonial adventures, by the end of the 19th century Germany had been able to secure only a few late colonial holdings in Africa, China and the Pacific. Wilhelm was also uninterested in maintaining Bismarck's web of alliances, and subsequently France broke out of diplomatic isolation with a Russian alliance against the sabre-rattling Wilhelm in 1894. He alienated the British by publicly supporting Paul Kruger of the Boer Transvaal Republic in 1896, and by engaging in a naval arms race with the Royal Navy.


The German Colonial Empire at it's height in 1914.

More sabre rattling occurred in the aftermath of the Scramble for Concessions, and subsequent Boxer Rebellion in China, in 1900 when Wilhelm condoned 'taking no prisoners', in what became known as the 'Huns' speech.The pinnacle of Wilhelmine era foreign policy failure was in 1905-6, when the Algeciras Conference saw Germany humiliated in a colonial crisis over French claims in Morocco. This was in the aftermath of an 'Entente Cordiale' between the British and French in 1904, and with the Russians in 1907, confirming Wilhelm's fears of Germany being encircled by hostile powers, that had been estranged by his reckless escapades. After another similar episode in 1911 over Morocco again, Germany's only reliable ally was the 'Sick Man on the Danube', Austria-Hungary.

Upon the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Germany and it's Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg gave a 'blank cheque' of support to Austria-Hungary, an impetus for the Empire's declaration of war on Serbia, and the subsequent web of alliances dragged most of Europe's Great Powers into war. The German Army pre-emptively invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg on August 3rd 1914, to bypass French defences in the 'Schliffen Plan', which called for swift French defeat. The Belgians held on long enough for the BEF to arrive from the UK, and for French forces to mobilise, and pull back from their initial offensive to stop the German advance at the Marne river, then outflank the Germans to the sea. The German Armies had been weakened by the transfer of some divisions east to stop the Russian invasion of East Prussia, where Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg won a victory at Tannenberg. By the end of 1914, trenches stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland in the West.


The Schliffen Plan, visualised.

Germany's overseas colonies and garrisons fell quickly in the first months of the war to French and British colonial garrisons; with the exception of guerilla warfare in Tanganyika. On the Western Front, the stalemate could not be broken by either old tactics of infantry charging at machine gun posts, or by new inventions such as flamethrowers, poison gas, aerial bombing, and tanks. Meanwhile, in the East, the Germans had been pushing further and further into Russian territory, with huge Russian casualties. Germany had to also send some reinforcements to prop up her ally of Austria-Hungary in the Alps against Italy, and against Serbia, then against Russia and Romania. By 1916, the German offensives had ground to a halt at Verdun, and the Allied one at the Somme was also getting nowhere. Germany had been blockaded by the Royal Navy, and food was becoming scarcer, with the need for 'ersatz' (fake) foods contributing to wartime demoralisation.


Maximum extent of Eastern Front occupation and authority of the Central Powers, late 1918.

In 1917, the Tsarist government in Russia was toppled by revolution; German Army allowed Lenin passage to Russia later that year, and a Bolshevik Revolution in November swept Russia into a civil war, with the Bolsheviks concluding a peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk in February 1918. At the same time, German policies of unrestricted submarine warfare (responsible for the Lusitania's sinking) had been resumed, souring relations with the neutral United States. The Zimmermann Telegram incident was the final straw, and the United States entered the Great War, with the US Expeditionary Forces arriving in time to prevent the transfer of German troops from the Eastern Front from tipping the scales against the British and French armies. As discontent mounted in Germany, the sailors at Kiel mutinied, the Kaiser fled to the Netherlands as the German monarchies were abolished, and a new German republic was proclaimed two days before an armistice was signed on the 11th of November 1918.

The Goldmark was officially adopted as the currency of the German Empire in 1873; owing to the administratively federative system used by the Second Reich, higher denomination (from 2 Marks) coins in silver and gold were minted with a common reverse, an imperial eagle displaying Hohenzollern regalia (either small (1873-1888) or large (1889-1918)), and specialised obverses depicting the monarch or coat of arms of the German state it was minted in (e.g. Wilhelm II for Prussia 1888-1918, Friedrich II for Baden 1907-1918, Ludwig II for Bavaria 1873-1886, etc.). Lower denomination coins (1 pfennig to 1 Mark) were minted with their denomination and the imperial eagle motif, without specialisation of state. All non-commemorative (and most of those) coins, state-specialised or not, carry the legend 'DEUTSCHES REICH' somewhere. Despite not being officially in the Latin Monetary Union, many German Empire precious metal coins are minted to a similar standard.

From 1914 the Goldmark became the Papiermark because of the war; and from 1916 pfennig denomination coins were minted in Zinc and aluminium as the war went on; silver commemoratives, minted by states, had mostly stopped by 1914, though some were struck until 1918. Many commemoratives of the German Empire era, especially those from the smaller states are very rare. Note that German Empire era commemorative coins are listed on Numista in the German states sections. The low-denomination pfennig coins continued to be struck with 1919 to 1922 dates, with the imperial eagle motif still present due to lack of new coin dies.


Weimar Republic: Crisis, Prosperity, and Crisis (1918-1933)

In 1919 the young German republic (commonly called the Weimar Republic) was in chaos; disgruntled Spartactists (communists) attempted to march on Berlin in January, and the unrest and street firghting between socialists and Freikorps (right-wing paramilitary units) led to the new Republic to establish itself in Weimar rather than in Berlin. There were also demonstrations in Germany against the 'Diktat' of the Treaty of Versailles presented by the victorious Allies at the Paris Peace Conference, where she was effectively forced to accept without negotiation, the return of Alsace to France, and the loss of valuable lands to new states like Poland and Czechoslovakia. The following year, the right-wing Kapp Putsch and a general strike paralysed Berlin, while the German economy went to shambles following the imposition of reparations of some £6,600 million in 1921. As French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr to seize reparations, the government allowed the printing of millions of banknotes, driving hyperinflation by mid 1923, when currency lost it's value in the time it took for a transaction to occur. Around this time, a short-lived Soviet republic was set up in Thuringia, and a right-wing putsch by the NSDAP took place at a beer hall in Munich.


Territorial losses from the Treaty of Versailles; Germany lost about 10% of her land, and all her overseas colonies; she had to disband her navy, and was limited to an army of 100,000 men.

From 1924 onwards, the German economy gradually began to recover, with the imposition of a new currency (the Rentenmark) to replace the nearly-worthless Papiermarks, and loans from the United States organised by Vice-President Charles Dawes, forming the lynchpin of an European economic boom, which the German middle class eventually began to share in. The mid to late 1920s saw the emergence of a beautiful new, daring cosmopolitan culture in Berlin, of challenging rigid social norms on everything from fashion to sexuality. At the same time, under foreign minister Gustav Stressmann, Germany cast off her status as an international pariah, and was invited to join the League of Nations. She secured her borders in 1925 at Locarno, and joined the international push for disarmament in 1928, at the Kellogg-Briand Pact. For a supposedly defeated nation, 'die Goldenen Zwanziger' were very prosperous times for 'gay Berlin' and the new booming German economy.


Depiction of a cabaret scene in 'decadent, liberal [Weimar] Berlin' by Otto Dix, 1926.

It all came tumbling down in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash in 1929, as foreign investors, banks and businesses recalled their loans to Germany, who suddenly found herself in deficit almost overnight. As unemployment reached unprecedented levels, the fringe ideas promoted by extremist groups that had faded into the background in the mid 1920s came roaring back with increased popularity. Once again, there were battles in the streets between the KPD (Communists), and the 'Brownshirts' of the NSDAP (National Socialists, or Nazis). In times of economic turmoil, desperate people turned to charismatic demagogues who promised them everything, pinning the blame on minority groups. By June 1932 the NSDAP was the largest component of the Reichstag, and despite the moderate conservative Hindenburg winning the Presidency again, in January 1933 he was pressured into appointing the leader of the NSDAP, Adolf Hitler as Chancellor.

The first few years of the Weimar Republic saw increased usage of notgeld coins and banknotes issued by German municipalities in lieu of coinage (shortage) after the war. Pfennigs were still being minted with the Imperial Eagle until 1922; when the first aluminium coins of the new Republic were issued. Regular issue coins did not exist until 1924, when the Papiermark had been revalued as the Rentenmark. These were issued throughout the 1920s; 1924 issues usually have 'RENTENPFENNIG', whereas 1925 and after issues have 'REICHSPFENNIG'.

The Weimar Republic also issued numerous, beautiful silver commemorative coins in (usually) 3 and 5 Reichsmark denominations throughout the mid-late 1920s and early 1930s; these are usually very rare, with some notable exceptions being more common.

The NSDAP: Road to War, and the Rise and Fall of the Reich (1933-1945)

In February 1933, the Reichstag burned down; this was used as the excuse to suspend civil rights and introduce Article 48, allowing for Hitler to assume emergency powers. Almost immediately the press was censored, restrictions on freedom of movement and speech, and discriminatory treatment and harassment was afforded to political opposition, such as journalists and intellectuals, who were sent to the first concentration camps at Dachau. President Hindenburg died in 1934, and the final nail to the young German democracy's coffin came when Hitler merged their two offices into one, 'Führer'. Conscription was introduced, in direct violation of Versailles, and special restrictions were placed on 'undesirable' persons, many of whom fled for other countries at this time. The Saar Territory was returned to Germany by referendum in 1935.

By 1936, when the world's attention was focused on Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, the Army was sent into the Rhineland, demilitarised by Versailles. France and Britain did nothing in spite of this blatant violation of the Treaty. That same year, the Games of the XI Olympiad were held in Berlin, where all the world was invited to gander at the new highways and prosperity of the German people; a show orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels to dazzle those skeptical of the new regime. Even as the Condor Legion's planes rained hell down on the Guernica Basque people in the Spanish Civil War, even as German troops marched into Austria (Anschluß), and the first 'undesirable' targeted pogroms (Kristallnacht) occurred, the world did nothing. And when the British did confront Hitler over the Sudetenland crisis in the summer of 1938, all Chamberlain could do was appease the Führer and doom the Czechoslovaks.


German territorial acquisitions, January 1935- March 1939.

After March 1939, when Hitler directly violated the Munich Agreement signed the previous summer by invading the rest of Czechoslovakia, it became apparent that only force would stop an aggressor nation. Too late the British and French began rearming, and in the summer of 1939 the tensions in Europe were at an almost unprecedented height. By now, the Wehrmacht had acquired the significant Czech Skoda works, and remilitarised to a tremendous level. The world watched in horror as two sworn enemies, Hitler and his nemesis Stalin, signed a non-aggression pact secretly partitioning Eastern Europe. Then on the 1st of September 1939, the storm broke as the Westerplatte Forts near Gdynia were bombarded, signalling the beginning of the German invasion of Poland. Days later the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany.

Poland fell in a month, and was partitioned between the two dictatorships. The rest of 1939 passed with little incident, known as the Phoney War (Sitzkrieg) by both sides, facing each other on the Rhine. In March 1940 the first blows landed not in France, but in Denmark, which capitulated inevitably, and in Norway, where Allied intervention met a disastrous end when well-equipped German ski troops with aerial support cut off the supply lines. The Scandinavian campaign had provided the Kriegsmarine's U-boats with North Sea bases, to avoid a naval blockade like in 1914-18. The second blow, came soon after- in May 1940, the Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium; a feint through Flanders drew the Allies into Belgium, while the main invasion force struck at the Ardennes, breaking through at Sedan, racing to the Channel, and cutting the Allies off at Dunkerque, where a delay enabled the evacuation of 338,000 persons to Britain.


The Manstein Plan, used in Fall Gelb (invasion of the BeNeLux countries and northern France), remarkably similar to the Schliffen Plan of 1914.

On the 14th of June 1940, the Wehrmacht marched into Paris, a week later, with the Panzers at the Spanish border and in Lyon, the new government, formed under Philippe Pétain, formally signed an armistice on the 22nd of June; France had fallen. The German government expected this to be the end of the war; but when it became clear the British Prime Minister (Winston Churchill) had no intention of surrendering, plans were drawn up for Operation Sealion (the invasion of Britain). The outnumbered RAF, aided by pilots evacuated from Poland, Czechoslovakia and France, fought the Luftwaffe in the skies above Britain; by September, Hermann Göring had switched to conducting massive bombing raids over British cities like London, Coventry and Birmingham. The Blitz continued until the spring of 1941; meanwhile the Battle of the Atlantic was being fought by hundreds of crews to keep Allied convoys safe, and supply lines open.

Meanwhile, the German government had officially signed the Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, forming the Axis powers. Smaller Balkan nations were drawn into the Axis, such as Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and in the spring of 1941 Hitler secured his southern flank by invading and partitioning Yugoslavia, then Greece, where the RAF again fought a vanguard action at the Battle of Athens, and over Crete, but had to be evacuated. There was now only one more perceived threat to the Reich, and that was in the east, a nexus of everything that the Nazis despised- the USSR, which was invaded on the 22nd of June 1941. Axis forces initially made massive gains; the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground, and city after city fell to the Wehrmacht, with some of their populations welcoming the Germans as an alternative to Stalinism. As the months drew on, Kiev and Smolensk fell to the Wehrmacht; by late November the Wehrmacht stood at the very gates of Moscow.


The point of furthest extent of the territorial acquisition, satellites, allies, and military occupations of the Third Reich in late 1942 (September-December).

The weather finally turned, however; the roads turned to slush, and the temperature dropped, freezing engines and soldiers alike. The ace card were 18 divisions of fresh Siberian troops under Zhukov that had liberated some 500,000 square miles by January 1942. By now, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour had brought China, the United Kingdom, Free France, the Soviet Union, and most importantly, the material resources of the United States into the same Allied cause; Lend Lease came pouring into both Britain and the USSR from America. The travails of the Soviet Union were far from over; that spring the Wehrmacht began a new drive, this time southwards, towards the oil-rich fields of Baku, beyond the Caucasian mountains. Once again the Wehrmacht plowed across the Ukraine, until it came to the great Volga port of Stalingrad. Here the Red Army held on to the city, fighting block by block and floor by floor, until the resources to cut off the Sixth Army in the city from German supply lines could be achieved via encirclement. On the 2nd of February, von Paulus surrendered the Sixth Army to the Red Army, and after a decisive tank battle at Kursk, the Red Army's thousand mile trek to Berlin began.

At the same time, Germany's allies of Italy and Vichy France had been beaten back in East and North Africa respectively by the British, Free French, and Americans. German troops intervened under Erwin Rommel in the 'Afrika Korps'; driving the Allies back in Egypt until the battles of Bir Hakeim and the Second Battle of El Alamein.
The tide turned swiftly as the Free French aided the Americans in storming across North Africa until the final expulsion of the German Army from Tunisia in early 1943. The invasion of Sicily in July that year preceded a further invasion of Sardinia, Corsica, and then of southern Italy itself. The Italian government responded on the 25th of November (Luglio) by deposing Mussolini and then sending out peace feelers to the Allies. This was met in turn by a German invasion and occupation of the Italian peninsula, and a brutal slog up the rocky spine of the peninsula commenced.


Map of the Third Reich and it's territories and satellites in September 1944. Goebbels likened this phase of the war to the 'Götterdämmerung' (Twilight of the [Norse] Gods - Wagner).

The war had definitively turned against the Axis by 1944; the Red Army had liberated the long siege of Leningrad, and was pushing the Axis out of modern day Belarus and Ukraine. The momentum had swung clearly in the favour of the Soviet Union, whom by May was pushing well into Hungary and Romania. The third front was finally opened on the 6th June 1944 when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Occupied France; followed by a similar amphibious assault on in Provence, which liberated most of France from German Occupation by the end of 1944, pushing towards Metz and the Ardennes, in the 'Battle of the Bulge'. As the Red Army pushed across Poland, they uncovered the horrifying reality of the treatment of 'undesirable' persons and political prisoners from Germany and the occupied territories, in the form of various camps, some knitted out specifically for extermination by the SS and carrying out the Nazi regime's 'Final Solution' from 1942 onwards. The footprints these atrocities left behind still influence some very controversial political aspects today.

As 1945 dawned with the Western Allies and the Red Army in Germany proper, and a continuation of the bombing raids that had been occurring in increasing size over German cities since 1943, such as the firebombing of Dresden, waves of German civilians migrated westward while the Reich collapsed around them; from March 1945 the US Army advanced across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany, while the British drove into Hanover and Holstein, and the Free French into the southern part of Germany. The Red Army reached the outskirts of Berlin in March, and by April were fighting their way into the city itself, where the Nazi leadership had been sequestered in the Führerbunker. American troops met the Soviets on the Elbe River on the 25th of April; and on the 30th, the former Führer was reported dead by his own hand. The fledgeling Flensburg Government convened as a provisional entity, and on the 8th of May 1945, General Alfred Jodl announced the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich, thus marking V-E Day and ending the war in Europe.

From 1933 onwards Germany continued to use the same coins that had been minted from 1924; but from 1936 onwards, coins began to carry the swastika-bearing eagle, rather than the republican Weimar eagle used since 1922. Some commemoratives were made in silver in the early Nazi years (1933-36), but are far less remarkable in general than Weimar issues.

German pfennig coinage in 1924 standards continued until 1940, when aluminium and zinc were used for the low denomination coins until the end of the war in 1945. In occupied territories, the Reichsmark was given an artificial exchange rate to local currencies in it's favour. Ghetto coinage and military occupation currency exists for some occupied territories during the war. The same low denomination coins from the 1940 metal change were restruck following the end of the war without the swastika for circulation in Allied occupied Germany.


Divided Germany: Post-war reconstruction, Cold War and Re-Unification (1945- present)

After the end of the war, the Allied Occupation authorities split Germany into four occupation sectors; for the French, British, American and Soviet troops; each also received a quadrant of the city of Berlin, despite it being wholly within the Soviet sector of Germany. Ostmark province (Austria) was detached from Germany and also divided into four occupation zones, with Vienna receiving the same treatment as Berlin, until 1955 for Austria.
In the East, Prussia as an administrative entity was dissolved and Polish borders moved westwards to compensate for the Soviets keeping the eastern half of Poland occupied in 1939. Reparations were mostly industrial, moved to France from the Rhineland, who also received a Saarland protectorate until 1955 again.


Division of the Occupied territory of Germany after 1945, until 1949.

By 1949, the political situation had shifted to enmity between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, former Allies during the war. The Berlin blockade and subsequent airlift to supply West Berlin heightened suspicions of each other's motives, and the USSR was suspicious of the USA's Marshall Plan investments being pumped into Western Europe, while the USSR's occupation and installing of obedient communist regimes in Eastern Europe seemed to confirm the USA's McCarthy era 'Red Scare' of Communism's 'domino theory'. Two German states were launched this year; in the west, from the British, American and French sectors, the German Federal Republic (GFR), or Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BDR). In the east, there was the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or Deutsch Demokratische Republik (DDR).

As post-war rebuilding got on, the nations of Europe began to realise how beneficial cooperation and unity could be; in 1951 the first step towards the European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community, was founded by the six founding members (including West Germany) that would go on to found the EEC with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. This step by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer is seen by many, including his French counterpart Charles de Gaulle as the preliminary step to a Franco-German reconciliation and the eventual formation of the EU based on this key European partnership.

Throughout the Cold War, the divided city of Berlin has been described as the 'temperature gauge' of world politics. This reached a height in the early 1960s with the construction of the Berlin Wall by East German leader Walter Ulbricht, to stop the 'brain drain' of emigration to the West via the GFR's enclave of West Berlin, now walled in by concrete. Dissatisfaction in the East German state had led to an uprising in 1953, and authoritarian methods of population control had been employed from the USSR, in the form of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police force. By the later 1960s, as tensions over nuclear war died down, the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt offered an olive branch in the form of 'Ostpolitik' to the Eastern Bloc states, in the spirit of Détente.

The result of this 'Ostpolitik' were several agreements ratified in 1970, and Brandt paid a visit to the Warsaw Uprising memorial in Warsaw where he famously knelt in a gesture of humility. By the 1980s, developments in politics in both the USSR and the USA had resulted in the Cold War becoming 'Cold' again. As part of NATO, the West German state was briefly involved in a war scare in 1983 known as 'Able Archer', which was almost mistaken for being an actual invasion. Further developments occurred in 1985 when Mikhail Gorbachev became Premier of the USSR, and his policies of glasnost and perestroika made it clear that he would not send Soviet troops to intervene in Eastern Bloc states, leading to a resurgence of liberal political movements demanding political and personal freedoms. In 1989, in the aftermath of widespread discontent spreading from the other Eastern Bloc states where rebellion was brewing, demonstrations occurred across the East German state, and finally after massive emigration, the Berlin Wall came down on the 9th of November 1989, and the following year, after extensive negotiations, the East German state acceded to West Germany, ending four decades of division.


Fall of the Berlin Wall, 9th November 1989.

Even today there remains a disparity between East and West German populations, in such things as GDP, political beliefs and lifestyles. Since re-unification, however, the process of integration has been pushed along by successive Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany, beginning with Helmut Kohl, who also oversaw the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, forming the EU. In 2001, Germany officially adopted the Euro, and has since become the leading economic power in Europe, and plays a central role in the affairs of the European Union. Today it is a very successful nation with one of the world's highest standards of living and the world's 4th largest economy.

From 1945 to 1948, coins minted under the Nazi authority from 1940 were re-minted without the swastika design; these coins are quite rare. From 1949 onwards, West Germany minted it's first coins, first with the legend 'BANK DEUTSCHER LANDER', then with 'BUNDESREPUBLIK DEUTSCHLAND'. East Germany followed suit in 1950, with a change of emblem on the reverse in the early 1950s. Both countries have issued commemorative coins in silver and copper-nickel since the 1950s; upon re-unification the West German Deutsche Mark (since 1948) was used as the currency of a unified Germany until it's ascension to the Eurozone in 2001. The Euro is Germany's currency today.
I just overflew your work and got caught at the beginning, the Varus battle was definitely in 9 A.D., in 14 A.D. Germanicus returned to Germania with new legions.

I do not want to denigrate your detailed and usually very good work, but should we not rather devote ourselves to the numismatic history of the countries (like in the italic parts of your text)? There are already enough articles about the general history of countries on the net.
Quote: "Idolenz"​I just overflew your work and got caught at the beginning, the Varus battle was definitely in 9 A.D., in 14 A.D. Germanicus returned to Germania with new legions.

​I do not want to denigrate your detailed and usually very good work, but should we not rather devote ourselves to the numismatic history of the countries (like in the italic parts of your text)? There are already enough articles about the general history of countries on the net.
​No problem, thanks for the correction.

I usually come back later and add to the italic'd parts, so stay tuned. ;)

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