My friend gave me these two Notgeld from Trier Germany. The coins depict the massive city gate called Porta Nigra. I was personally not aware of this town’s extensive 2,000 year history. According to Wiki, this massive Roman town gate was built between 160 AD and 180 AD. I display the two coins together so that you can explore the differences in the engraving between the two pieces. Obviously, they depict the same town gate but the engraving is quite different. If you have a comment or a coin with this famous Trier city gate, please post it. Very best regards, collect89
Those two look alot different. One looks much more brick and stone with the other looking more Greek with accented pillars. Are they both real? I dont know anything about these and I have notgeld's but have not seen any metal ones. Just the paper.
Even more different than the gate is the small building next to it...that is radically different. I don't have any Notgeld coinage, and I don't know if I have any of the currency, and I don't know much about it/them...but I think they are pretty darn cool. Is your set of examples on different metals? They look it but it could just be the wear/toning pattern that makes it seem that way. Are they different dies used, or is one a counterfeit of the other?
Kriegsgeld or Notgeld? I was once informed (here at CT) that the equivalent to Notgeld produced during the war is referred to as "Kriegsgeld" (literally "war money"). These coins were authorized by individual German states and/or cities to circulate in place of national coinage in a time of shortage. All coins & currency issued as emergency/necessity money during the money shortages & hyperinflation I have called Notgeld. Perhaps an expert here could give us a better definition of what these coins should be called. Here is one of my favorite examples from my collection.
Last year's piece from the Unesco Cultural Heritage series featured various historical buildings in Trier: On the left, near the word "Römische", you can see the Porta Nigra (which means Black Gate). You can download a larger image here: http://www.bbr.bund.de/nn_21470/DE/...nkm_C3_A4ler/1Preis__Bild,property=poster.jpg (That large image is from the design contest; the actual coin has the artist's initials instead of "XY".) Note that this view of the monuments is a combination; the tower above the Porta Nigra, for example, is a Roman column in a suburb of Trier. The city of Trier is considered to be the oldest city (in the sense of a big civil settlement) in Germany. For some time in the 4th century it was even the main residence of the Roman emperor. So Trier did, and still does, have quite a few Roman buildings/monuments. Some of them, such as the Aula Palatina, "survived" because they were later turned into Christian buildings. The Porta Nigra was also used as a church for several centuries. For that purpose, one of its Roman towers was made lower; for the church only one tower was needed. After 1800 the Porta Nigra was rebuilt again and turned into its "original" state, except that one of the two "towers" is now lower than the other one ... Christian
Here are some images of the Porta Nigra while it was a city gate, and while it was a church: http://www.markaurel.de/portanigra.htm - The first image on that page shows the Porta Nigra from inside the city; the lower one shows it from outside after the church was demolished in 1804 (note the building on the right, which is probably the one on your notgeld pieces). http://www.markaurel.de/mittelalter/portanigra.htm - This page shows the Porta Nigra while it was a church (St. Simeon): from outside (above; not necessarily accurate) and from inside (below). As the Porta did not have a city gate function then, another gate tower was needed (which was torn down later). http://www.ewetel.net/~norbert.fiks/rab/rab06.html - The first five images show the Porta Nigra on various postal stamps. Also, in 2007 Luxembourg was the cultural capital of Europe, and they included neighboring parts of Belgium, France and Germany. Trier's contribution was an exhibition about the emperor Constantine, and a local initiative of banks, merchants, etc. launched the Constantine Thaler on that occasion. It had a value of €10, could be used as means of payment in participating stores, but many people simply got and kept it as a souvenir. Attached is an image of the design; contrary to the €100 coin in my previous post, this was a base metal piece. But it does show the Porta Nigra! Christian
Great photos & information Hello Cristian, Thanks for the great photos & information. I am very sorry that I have repeatedly just driven past Trier without spending time there. On one trip, my friend & I stopped in Luxembourg to buy some duty free. We decided that we would just drive on instead of stopping for the night. It would have been nice to see the area in the daylight.
Ah well, you can never see "everything" anyway. In seven years, by the way, the Porta Nigra will most probably be on another coin. Germany currently has a series of €2 coins each of which honors one state (kinda like the US state quarters), and the 2017 coin will commemorate or celebrate the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. According to the current plans, that coin will feature the Porta Nigra too ... Christian
