Karl-Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, Die Goldwährung im deutschen Reiche während des Mittelalters (1895)

Inama-Sternegg’s five-part journal article traces the emergence, partial institutionalization, and eventual retreat of gold currency in the medieval German Empire, ending with the imperial mint ordinance of 1524. Its central problem is not simply when gold coins appeared, but when commercial circulation became legally recognized currency. Drawing on mint ordinances, interterritorial agreements, accounts, charters, and numismatic scholarship, he distinguishes the production of coins, their acceptance in commerce, their use as accounting units, and their legally prescribed payment functions. The resulting history qualifies its own title: medieval German gold currency was an incomplete experiment whose commercial promise exceeded its institutional foundations.

Section I explains the demand for gold through the disintegration of Carolingian monetary unity. Delegated minting rights became territorial monopolies; debasement, compulsory exchange, and repeated withdrawals of older issues undermined money’s usefulness across both distance and time. The survival of pounds and shillings as accounting units preserved only formal unity, since the pennies counted differed radically in value. Towns sought remedies through supervision, monetary agreements, and acceptance of reliable foreign coins. Payments in bullion supplied stability for larger transactions, while groschen provided larger silver denominations. Neither overcame the territorial fragmentation and fiscal exploitation of coinage.

Section II shifts from this unmet demand to the conditions governing gold supply. Gold recorded in ceremonial payments, ecclesiastical remittances, or treasuries cannot automatically be treated as circulating money. Despite Italian and western European gold issues, adoption in Germany remained slow. Limited domestic production, trade patterns that yielded few gold inflows, and rising international gold prices restricted access. Inama-Sternegg links the persistence of an older German valuation near ten parts silver to one part gold with resistance to imports once gold commanded considerably more abroad.

Section III describes the reversal from the 1330s: Hanseatic trade, English payments for military assistance, and mining helped enlarge supplies. The precise causes of falling gold prices remain less certain than those of their earlier rise. Bohemian coinage, begun in 1325, furnished an influential precedent; subsequent imperial privileges encouraged adherence to the Florentine standard. Yet minting and circulation did not themselves establish a gold currency:

Die Geschäfte des täglichen Lebens werden noch durchgängig mit Silber beglichen; die Goldzahlungen beziehen sich, soweit sie vorkommen, noch überwiegend auf fremde Goldsorten und die Geldrechnung ist auch in diesen Fällen fast immer auf Silber gestellt.

English translation: The transactions of everyday life are still settled throughout in silver; gold payments, insofar as they occur, still predominantly involve foreign gold coin types, and even in these cases monetary accounting is almost always based on silver.

Gold initially belonged chiefly to international commerce, elite expenditure, and major credit transactions. Its treatment as a commodity with a variable price separates this phase from a legally constituted currency system. Integration into territorial coinage then created a contradiction: mint lords needed reliable coins for commerce but sought revenue from reminting and reduced metallic content. Through close readings of Rhenish agreements, Inama-Sternegg shows that fixed conversion rates did not necessarily entail interchangeable legal tender. The union of 1386 mattered above all because it established the Rhenish gulden as the enduring German gold type, not because it instituted a general gold standard.

Section IV follows attempts by Ruprecht and, more energetically, Sigismund to turn that widely recognized coin into imperial currency. Their initiatives combined commercial reform, fiscal interests, and recovery of royal authority. Territorial resistance nevertheless determined the limits of legislation:

Denn wie jeder Reichsfürst, so fühlte sich auch jede Reichsstadt in Sachen des Goldumlaufs autonom, und nie wäre es möglich geworden, anders, als durch ausdrückliche lokale Anerkennung, die Goldwährung zur legalen Währung zu machen.

English translation: For, like every prince of the Empire, every imperial city also regarded itself as autonomous in matters of gold circulation, and it would never have been possible to make gold currency legal currency except through explicit local recognition.

Sigismund expanded imperial minting and ordered acceptance of his gulden, while the Rhenish electors defended their position by excluding imperial issues. His commands of 1428–29 articulated the principle of an imperial gold currency, but lacked the detailed arrangements and effective authority required for uniform implementation.

Section V explains why widespread gulden accounting nevertheless survived. A real gold coin could replace imaginary higher accounting units and connect coin-counting with reckoning by silver weight. But diverging accounting rates and metallic values generated premiums, exports, and reminting. Stabilizing gold alone was insufficient:

Um aber eine genügende Stetigkeit der Relation zu erreichen, bedurfte es sowohl eines festen Münzfusses der Gulden, als auch einer vollständigen Neuordnung der Landessilbermünze.

English translation: But achieving sufficient stability in the ratio required both a fixed minting standard for the gulden and a complete reorganization of territorial silver coinage.

Such coordination proved unattainable across the Empire. Territories without substantial gold production resisted dependence on gold valuations; even Hanseatic cities restricted gold accounting. Later debasement and inadequate supplies weakened circulation, while expanding silver production and large gulden-equivalent silver coins supplied alternatives. The 1524 ordinance, in the author’s reading, recognized this outcome by granting silver currency status and treating gold as trade coinage. Gold accounting thus outlived gold’s effective monetary predominance.

The article’s lasting analytical interest lies in separating monetary practice from monetary law and relating both to political fragmentation and commercial resources. Its conclusion also reveals Inama-Sternegg’s evaluative framework: he associates reliable gold money with commercially leading economies and presents Germany’s experiment as an expression of a temporarily flourishing national economy, frustrated by weak imperial authority, extractive mint policies, inadequate banking institutions, and insecure international gold supplies.