Pfennig

The pfennig (German: [ˈpfɛnɪç] ; pl. 'pfennigs' or 'pfennige' (); symbol pf or ₰) or penny is a former German coin or note, which was an official currency from the 9th century until the introduction of the euro in 2002. While a valuable coin during the Middle Ages, it lost its value through the years and was the minor coin of the Mark currencies in the German Reich, West Germany and East Germany, and the reunified Germany until the introduction of the euro. Pfennig was also the name of the subunit of the Danzig mark (1922–1923) and the Danzig gulden (1923–1939) in the Free City of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland). The Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark uses an alternate spelling of pfennig, “fenning", as its subunit, and after Germany adopted the euro, remains the only currency to use pfennigs.

Overview

Name The word Pfennig (replacing the denarius or denarius as a low-denomination silver coin) can be traced back to the 8th century and also became known as the Penning, Panni(n)g , Pfenni(n)c, Pfending and by other names, e.g. in Prussia until 1873, Pfenning. The -ing- or -inc suffix was used, in addition to -ung, the formation of affiliation substantives and also appears in other coin denominations, for example in the schilling. Beyond that, its origin has not been clarified, but an early borrowing from the Latin pondus ("weight", cf. pound) is possible. According to an 1848 Leipzig trade lexicon the name pfennig was "originally the general name of every coin in Germany, which is supposed to be derived from the hollow coins or bracteates, because these had the shape of a pan" (i.e. they were bent)." The word Pfennig is etymologically related to the English penny, the Swedish penning, which was also the model for the Finnish penni (1860–2001), the Estonian penn (1918–1927), the Polish fenig (1917–1918), the Lithuanian word for money pinigai and the pfenig (fening) of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1998–today). The /pf/ rather than /p/ in both pronunciation and spelling is a result of the High German consonant shift or second Germanic sound shift which affected the High German dialects of what is now southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria. High German (and to some extent Central German) dialects form the basis for modern Standard German.

Related currencies The pfennig was the progenitor of a whole series of later coin denominations, which became parts or multiples of the later pfennig. These include the groschen ("big [pfennig]", from the Latin grossus "big, thick" ), Angster ("narrow [pfennig]", from the Latin angustus "narrow, thin"), Albus ("white [pfennig]", from the Latin albus "white"; initially equivalent to a Groschen), Witte ("white [pfennig]"), Rappen ("pfennig with a raven"), Stäbler ("pfennig with the Basle staff"), Heller ("Haller [pfennig]"), Schwaren ("heavy [pfennig]") etc. There were also "light pfennigs" (leichte Pfennige), "good pfennigs" (gute Pfennige) or "custom pfennigs" (Zollpfennige), which had this name on the coin. Some types of pfennig were given special names in the vernacular, such as the Erfurt "coffin pfennig" (Sargpfennig).

Sign

As a currency sign a variation of the minuscule letter 'd' with a swash for 'denarius' in script (generally German Kurrent script or round hand in the 19th and 20th centuries), with its swash going from ascender to baseline or descender level, thus forming a distinct symbol: ₰. The symbol was also used for the denarius or equivalent units in other languages like denier in French or denario in Italian.

The pfennig symbol has nearly fallen out of use since the 1950s, with the demise and eventual abolition of the Reichsmark with its Reichspfennig, as well as the abolition of Kurrent by the Nazis on 3 January 1941, thus making it increasingly cryptic as familiarity with Kurrent script has decreased since that time. The symbol is encoded in Unicode at U+20B0 ₰ GERMAN PENNY SIGN. In some system fonts, the glyph of the symbol is mistakenly drawn as a Pf letters sequence or ligature ( in Aptos 2.01, in Lucida Grande 15.0), as Pf was used as an abbreviation for Pfennig. Unicode has U+3338 ㌸ SQUARE PENIHI, a square combination of ペニヒ (penihi), Japanese for "pfennig", for compatibility with earlier Japanese character sets.

History

Middle Ages

Charlemagne established, in the so-called Carolingian coin standard, that from a Carolingian Pfund ("pound") of silver, 240 coins were to be minted (corresponding to about 1.7 g of silver per coin). The coin was called in the Latin language of the time, a denarius after the old Roman coin (see Sachsenpfennig § Coin standard). From this coin evolved later the French denier and the Italian denaro. The Arabic word dinar (دينار) can also be traced back to the Latin word denarius. In the Old High German language, the denarius was already called the pfennig ("phenninc") at the time of Charlemagne. In North German and Dutch-speaking countries it was later called a Penning and in England the penny. The term paenig for the Roman denarius first appeared in England around 765, when King Offa had denarii struck out of silver based on the Carolingian model. This explains the abbreviation "d" as in denarius, which was used for the "old" penny in the United Kingdom until 1971. The early pfennig weighed around 1.3g to 2g, its weight tending to steadily decrease over the centuries. The widespread fluctuations in the weight of the same pfennigs were partly due to the manufacturing process, with the heavier pfennig specimens being sought out by private individuals in accordance with Gresham's law. At that time and even partly up to modern times, it was the total weight of a certain number of similar pfennigs that had to be right for larger payments, a practice that tended to promote deviating exchange rates between smaller and larger coin denominations and which found its climax in the Kipper and Wipper era; for example, the terms Schockpfennig (= 60 pf), Schockgroschen or "pound sterling" (= 240 d). From the 8th to the 13th century, the pfennig (or denarius) consisted of high-quality silver and was the only denomination in circulation, other units being used purely as arithmetic units, and it thus had a high purchasing power. As a result, this era is also called the Pfennigzeit ("pfennig era") in numismatics. Only very rarely were half-pfennigs minted, which were also known as obole or scherf.

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