MINTEONA - Eine rätselhafte westfälische Münzgruppe und ein Neufund aus Wechte

Ladies and gentlemen, Mintheona. In numismatics, this is how a mysterious coin group of the second quarter of the 11th century is called, which is located in western Westphalia and the southwestern Rhine. It is named after the clearly readable inscription Mintheona, which carries at least part of the group around a cross on the back. Generations of numismatists have been puzzled about where this coin group, which shows some remarkable unique coin images, can be found. Mintheona was originally understood as a latinized form of Minden, but that does not fit. This language form is not historically proven, just as impossible. It is correctly Minda and is also on a coin, namely the bishop Siegebert of Minden from 1022 to 1036. In Minden, in the middle of the 11th century, a few anonymous Petrus coins followed and in the meantime, the Mintheona group is also typological, especially in its diversity in such a short time, not even conceivable. It is thanks to the research of Peter Illich from 1977 and 1991 that he, using the method of stamp comparison, has placed this group in a room, which is both geographically and typologically surrounded by the places of Dortmund, as well as Duisburg and Cologne. The group is divided into four subgroups, which on the front pages show a ruler's head, special coin images and two different cross representations. According to the current count, there are 39 types or variants and all four subgroups are typologically interconnected and also linked by stamps. The greatest attention was always drawn to the subgroup with the extraordinary coin images, which make the whole group appear as the most interesting German coin series of the 11th century. A interpretation of the images is difficult. They are as a coin maker or goldsmith, as a coin workshop or competition, as an angler, candlestick puller or bell voice, as a runner or bell bearer, as well as as dragon fighters. So maybe summarized as representations of processes in coin making or by art craftsmen at work and with their tools. The typologically stamp-critical analysis by Mr. Illich has a much-divided range of Cologne, Duisburg and Dortmund type relationships that is difficult to structure. External fixed points are the Emperor's time, Emperor Conrad II from 1027 to 1039 and the Emperor's time, Heinrich III from 1046. And you can break it down to a decade from around 1036 to 1046-47. Illich located the group mostly in Duisburg, smaller parts in Dortmund. And last, in 2013, Bernd Kluge, the former director of the Berlin Coins Cabinet, proposed a structuring. He first suspects a private coin town called Mintheona, which was clearly royal and in the late Emperor's time, Conrad II, was opened around 1036. In this coin town Mintheona, until 1043, the types of the two subgroups with a cross on the front and a church back were shaped. In addition, from the subgroup with the special coin images, also types with a church back or other back images and also types with a frontal bar-shaped ruler image on the front and a church back. Around 1043, a back with the cross and the inscription Mintheona was introduced and this, both in the coin town Mintheona, in the subgroup of the special coin images, as well as now in Duisburg, with the well-known frontal ruler image. In Duisburg itself, also a founding of Emperor Conrad II, this ruler image had already been used before for types with the back name Duisburg. And also in Dortmund, a slightly older coin town from the late 10th century, this back was now used with a cross and Mintheona and combined with a crowned ruler image in the profile. Kluge assumes that the typology of the three royal coin towns Mintheona, Duisburg and Dortmund would have been largely unified around 1043, but these coin towns would have been closed in the course of a Reichsweiten-Coin-Reform of Emperor Heinrich III in 1047. As a result, both in Duisburg and in Dortmund, new image types were shaped with a frontal ruler image. This so varied coin town called Mintheona Kluge suspects in the vicinity of Cologne, maybe even in Cologne itself, because as compensation for the fact that since Conrad II the coin law in Cologne could have been shared between the emperor and the archbishop. However, it is questionable whether Mintheona can ever be more precisely localized. For typological reasons, the coin town between Cologne and Duisburg is to be sought, if not perhaps for shapes from Duisburg or Dortmund, as Peter Elich suggested. This image has now been won by typological and stamp-critical analyses. And that requires confirmation by another numismatic method, namely the coin find analysis. As far as proveniences are concerned, which so far have several hundred pieces of this group, they come from the treasures from countries around the Baltic Sea. Inland finds, i.e. from Westphalia, are very rare, but only such inland finds have the ability, because they show the circulation of the coins, to prove locations, perhaps to relativize. Fortunately, improved methods of archaeology, especially through probes, for about three decades more and more coins, also from the 11th century, appear, so that more and more statements become possible. The rediscovery of a piece from the Mintheona group by Nils Mulder, a licensed probe, is a good example of this. This piece appeared in Lengerich-Wechte and it shows the crowned bearded head on the front, King Heinrich III to the left. In the inscription it is marked with Heinrichus Rex. You can not read all the letters. On the back you can see a foot of the cross, with each a ball in the corners, around the inscription Mintheona. It is clearly the Dortmund type, which was shaped between 1043 and 1046. And exactly the same dominant image is now also found in types from the King's time of Heinrich III before this Mintheona piece and the Emperor's time directly after. This type is the most popular type from the entire Mintheona group. In 1977, 68 copies were already known. From Westphalia Lippe there are two more finds, exactly from this type. Once on the left from Nordhulen in the Kreis Coesfeld and on the right a halved piece to produce the half value of the phoenix from Verl. And these are the only finds so far from the entire Mintheona group. And even that could prove that this Münstädte Mintheona, which is still not locatable, is actually not in Westphalia, but in the Rhineland. Because if you look at the find horizon, both after and before the decade that interests us here, there are no Duisburg coins from all of Westphalia Lippe and after the turn of the 10th to the 11th century no more Cologne coins, but a lot of Dortmunder. From the late 10th century to the later 11th century already 14 pieces. And these finds, you can see it clearly, surround a wide area in northwestern Westphalia. And exactly in this area also the three Mintheona finds came to light. And so this method of the Münstfund analysis confirms that the existing Mintheona type is at home in Dortmund and thus closes the otherwise quite large gap in the before and after, namely significant Dortmunder Münsterreihe to the King's period, Einrichs des Dritten. I would like to show in the last part another example how coins may increasingly shed some light into the very dark numismatics in Westphalia now in the later 11th and early 12th century. And here I show the piece that colleague Andreas Wunschel has already shown, namely the coin from the Gesäcker marketplace, which appeared in the filling of a grave at the St. Peter's parish church. This coin shows on the one hand the three-line font S for Sancta Colonia Agrippinensis and on the other hand a cross with each a ball in the corners. The basic type of this coin was shaped since the later 10th century in the Archbishopric of Cologne Münststätte Soest, until far after the middle of the 12th century. And in the entire 11th and 12th century this type of coin was then also in other coinsmiths, especially in eastern and southern Westphalia, mimicked, namely anonymously. The inscription on the cross side O-D-Cross-D-O-Cross-I-V-Cross-M-I or something like that, is usually oriented, but if you compare it with the other piece where O-D-I-V-Ping stands, the crosses at the end of the beams of the large picture cross are unusual. So it's a special type and it has not yet appeared in Westphalia as a single found, but in three copies under 236 coins in the treasure of Halver in the Märkischen Kreis, which was hidden around 1100-1110 and also in a few copies of just over 60 coins in a treasure of Wadersloh-Lisborn in the Warendorf district, which was also hidden around 1110-1115. So this type of coin, also with heavy central-Westphalian weight, belongs to the later eleventh or earlier twelfth century and stylistic fine typological features also speak for this. Where is the piece to be placed? In Soest, this is a coin from Soest, it is not easy to place, the so-called Soester sign, this small comet-like swift at one of the balls in the cross angles, which can be found on this coin, but it was simply imitated. So not in Soest, not in the nearby Paderborn either. A reference to the location could be that I just have this back side with the four crosses in the inscription on a very interesting statue of Count Conrad II von Werl, who served from 1077 to 1092. But you don't know yet. In any case, in Geseke, lay on the Helweg, at the St. Peter's Church certainly for a long time a market traffic took place and this market traffic needed in the eleventh century increasingly also coin money. And this coin money in Geseke could come from Soest, could come from Paderborn, from Werl or elsewhere. Or maybe, this is a daring, a vague, but not impossible hypothesis, which can only be proven by other coin finds or can be contradicted. So this special subtype of the Westphalian Colonia Pfennige may even have arisen in Geseke itself. The Geseke example, like the longer example, at least show the importance of a regulated coin find care. In Westphalia, this has been guaranteed since the middle of the 20th century and it can also be targeted here in the future will be continued. In a few weeks, in the storage city in Münster-Körde will also be a separate office, in which you can always reach me Tuesday afternoons and Thursdays can reach on a daily basis. I would like to thank all coin finders who have been cooperating with me for years and after the coin find care was perhaps not quite smooth at first, so it is now largely in order and I hope for further good cooperation with you. Thank you very much!