This is whats left of a small lot i won in an auction. I was able to identify most of the notes, but these last 3 notes, from what i think are 2 cities/states... well, i wasnt able to indentify them. i do have the book by Courtney L. Coffing, A Guide and Checklist World Notgeld 1914-1947' second edition, but still, no luck un these last few notes.... Note A obverse Note A reverse Note B1 obverse Note B1 reverse Note B2 obverse Note B2 reverse Anyone read German ???? and thanks!!!
Well the last two are from Wasungen it is a town in the Schmalkalden-Meiningen district, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated on the river Werra, 11 km north of Meiningen. Hope that gives you a starting point :thumb: And I believe that the first one is from Mülsen, a municipality in Germany, Landkreis Zwickauer Land in the administrative region of Chemnitz, the Free State of Saxony. It is situated 6 km northeast of Zwickau.
WHAT??? ok, i knew they had 2 levels of community heirarchy ... but now 3?? The US has country, state, county, city/town/ect. Germany has country, state, district, town?? please correct me if i am wrong. I would prefer to at least list the heirarchy correctly on my site I would hate to say the city is fromthe wrong place lol. the book i have, based on what you told me, says Wasungen in Thueringer for that note. Is that a city/state combo, not including the District? or somethign else? And then the second note you mentioned, which i guess is the first note i posted lol They have a free state within Germany? Is it part of Germany and autonomously administered locally? or does the term Free State have a seperate meaning over there? i did a loose translation on an internet site for this note, and it said somethign about the note being fromthe halls of saxon. I didnt really know what that meant, but it kind of makes sense now.
One other Question, if i can lol, is Thuringia the same 'state' as Thueringen? The book i have say another note i have is from Thueringen, but when i googled the term, Thuringia was all the responses i got. My wife, who took a ton of german classes and does help when she can, thought maybe the name changed or something, because she recognized the name from her classes .... or, are the 2 towns 2 seperate entities..?
Ok (it does seem like i am again talking to myself, in which case, i admited in another post, i learn nothing lol) i got a little lucky when searchig the two names today. It does seem that Thuringia the same 'state' as Thueringen. Thuringia is like an english translation, and Thuringen is the german translation. Not sure why the book i am using shows an 'E' in Thueringen, but thats a different story. Wikipedia has a nice page talking about the state. (yes, it is a state). Wiki had this to say... "The Free State of Thuringia (German: Freistaat Thüringen) is located in central Germany. It has an area of 16,171 square kilometers (6,243.7 sq mi) and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen Bundesländer (federal states). The capital is Erfurt." I also leanred, that each state is divided up into districts. So like the US, Germany has 4 levels of community Heirarchy, they just call em' different. So it does look like the book gives the city/state combo, and ignores the district. good thing to know
On this one you are correct. When i first tried looking up the note, i tried using Mulsen, much the way you have it spelt. But its not listed in the book. I tried looking on google, and yes, Mulsen is a city. But its not in the book. Then i got a wacky idea to try adding an E. I know just how much Germans love using that E lol. Muelsen, is the name of the city .. only spelled differently from the way i originaly thought. The note is from Muelsen St. Jacob which is located in Sachsen, or Saxon. Many thanks Steve
Coool notes Daggar..... when my colleague comes over in a few weeks I will have him read them for me and get back to you. RickieB
The political/administrative structure of a German state varies ... from state to state. Wasungen, for example, is part of the VG "Wasungen-Amt Sand", a sort of municipal community. That VG is part of Schmalkalden-Meiningen county, in the state of Thuringia (no districts in that state). Some cities, especially larger ones, are not part of any county (ie. the city is a county), in some states the city is the state. Also, while most states are simply called "Land XY", others are "Freistaat XY" or, in the case of city states, "Freie Stadt" or so. Another thing you should keep in mind that the German Reich had a different structure than the current Federal Republic of Germany - so you may come across Notgeld from places that used to be in Austria or Germany back then but are now in other countries, or that are still part of, say, Germany but in a different state. Christian
Nah, we simply write/type the ü. It's you ASCII-only folks who love to take that apart. Sometimes you may see u instead of the ü, sometimes you use ue as an ersatz. By the way, before umlauts could be used in URLs (http ...), it was normal to use the latter option. And since some e-mail clients still cannot handle them, the ü -> ue method is still common for mail. Same thing with the "Mülsen St. Jakob" on your note (which is now, as "Mülsen St. Jacob", part of the city of Mülsen). De Orc has already provided the relevant info about the county, state, etc. Christian
I am glad that we don't have to speak German, and I think English is a twisted language - so many things in English are truly not logical in the scheme of conversational understanding. I say that because I speak a couple of other languages, and they at least make sense.
In some languages the spelling reflects the pronunciation, so you either need characters beyond the ASCII set and/or character combinations, to represent them. In English that is not really necessary since you cannot tell the pronunciation of a word from how it is spelled anyway. Forgot to explain the two rhyming lines on the first note. This is the German text, in the spelling of that time ... Schnell reift im Kläger der Entschluß, Daß man die Antwort meiden muß. ... which in English would be something like this: Soon the decision matures in the plaintiff That the answer has to be avoided. Seems that the note was part of a series, and that one would have to collect the entire series to know the entire poem. Clever marketing strategy, hehe. Christian
many thanks chrisild for all the info it will take sonme time for it to 'settle' in the whole structure of the German city/states that you described just makes it seem like it dont need to bother with it all lol for those who know it, they will know the notes location by the info i give on my site. for those who dont know, no matter what info i give, they wont know exactly either way, so .. i wont bother i will list the city and state as i can figure it out in the book i got, but beyond that, i dont think i need to go further.
Yes, city and state only is just fine. In some cases it may make sense to differentiate between "state (then)" and "state (now)", but even that is not really necessary. Christian
