Hello I'm trying to find someone who is from Germany, I have many coins from Prussia and all over Germany and one is a gold coin that is a 250th aniv of Karlsruhe do you know anything about this coin. My family came here from Germany in the 1860's from what was Prussia at the time, also do you have any up dates about the name Prussia coming back. I know that my family name as far back as 1395 was Schmitt and at sometime they added Von Der or Ven Der to the name Schmitt. They married into the Behagg family from the Netherlands and both families Von Der Schmitt and Behagg still live in Jasper, Indiana. If you know anything please let me know. Thanks itsallngoodtime Bob
Hi Bob well I am not from Germany but if you have coins from that region that you might need help Iding then please post pics of both sides a number of the guy's here are quite well versed on them also we do have at least 1 member from Germany to my knowladge
Unfortunately for you, Schmidt/Schmitt is a pretty common name in Germany. The variety with the two Ts at the end occurs less frequently than the -dt variety. Try entering "Schmitt" here http://christoph.stoepel.net/geogen/v3/ and click on "Kartieren". You should get about 41,000 records for Germany (based on phone book listings), and you can then click on "Relative Darstellung" (map of German counties with number of Schmitt records per million inhabitants), "Absolute Karte" (similar but based on absolute figures), "Statistik sortiert nach Bundesländern" (charts by state). That should give you a vague idea of where the family may be from. Prussia was a big country (and then German state) but was dissolved after WW2. Don't think there are any plans to revive it; the states that until 1945 were occupied/controlled by Prussia certainly would not want that. Christian
Forgot to mention this: The city of Karlsruhe (then in Baden, now Baden-Württemberg) was founded in 1715, so your piece will be from 1965. In that year the Federal Republic of Germany did not issue any commemorative coins, so what you have is a medal, I think. May have been produced at the mint in Karlsruhe but I don't think it is a coin. And another family name map, this time for "von der Schmitt": http://www.verwandt.de/karten/absolut/von+der+schmitt.html The highlighted area is Düren county, in North Rhine Westphalia. Christian
