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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;chrisild, post: 75881, member: 39&quot;]On vacation <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie8" alt=":D" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />.&nbsp; Well, actually I am back now ...</p><p><br /></p><p>As for why German mint marks are not abbreviations of the city names, well, that has historical reasons. Before the German Empire was established in 1871, most countries in that area had just one mint, if they had one at all. Now Prussia had several mints and sort of &quot;numbered&quot; them using letters, with Berlin being A.</p><p><br /></p><p>After 1871, the German Empire used basically the same system. The order of the states followed the order in which they were listed in the constitution, and the Kingdom of Prussia was the first, so it continued to use A for Berlin, used B for Hannover, and C for Frankfurt. Next were the Kingdom of Bavaria, with D for Munich, and the Kingdom of Saxony, with E for Dresden (until 1887) and then Muldenhütten.</p><p><br /></p><p>F was Stuttgart (Kingdom of Württemberg), G was Karlsruhe (Grand Duchy of Baden), H was Darmstadt (Grand Duchy of Hesse), I was not used (could be mixed up with J), and J was Hamburg (Free City of Hamburg). K was planned for Strasbourg but the mint there was not (re-)opened.</p><p><br /></p><p>The only &quot;German&quot; mint that actually used a city initial was Tabora in East Africa. It had a T on the 1916 issues.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for Vienna, well, between 1938 and 1945 it was part of Hitler&#039;s German Empire. Maybe, since Hitler was from Austria himself, he wanted to have the Vienna mint to have a mint mark close to the A. Who knows. According to the Coinage Act as amended in 1934, all German mints except Berlin would be closed at a later stage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Well, it never came to that. And nowadays Stuttgart is the mint location with the largest production share ...</p><p><br /></p><p>Christian[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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