Germany.
Until the unification of Germany in our own days, and the adoption of the present imperial currency system, German monetary history reproduces perpetually all the elements of that mediæval system, bimetallic in fact though not theoretically so conceived, which England flung away in 1816, and from the toils of which France has not as yet completely emerged.
As safeguards against the evils of that system which she had felt with such bitter experience, and
which had culminated in the crisis closing the Thirty Years' War, Germany could only feebly employ the mechanism of ineffectual Mint conventions. For a century she persevered in the effort to establish a common standard and Mint system, but in vain. The attempt had to be abandoned, and the reeling system left to its own process of disintegration; and when at last the events of 1871 came to give her unity in her coinage, as well as political life, there were not less than nine distinct and independent coinage systems in existence.
Hardly had the crisis of the Thirty Years' War passed out of mind before again the currency system had begun to work its baneful effects.
GERMANY: THE ZINNAISCHE STANDARD
In 1665 complaints were loudly made of the corrupt and debased state of the coin, due to export and culling. There is, indeed, quite a literature of these same complaints. The language of the Reichstattisches conclusum (Ratisbon, 12th September 1666) expressly attributes this export to the higher value set upon the gold in foreign countries, especially Venice. And the statement of the warden of the Mint of the three corresponding circles—Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia—delivered in his Gutachten of the preceding May, was that the place of these good German ducats had been taken by very depreciated coins of Italy, France, England, and Holland. The three higher circles, accordingly—Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia—met in conference and determined on a thorough investigation. The advice submitted to
them was to raise the thaler from 90 to 96-kreutzer (see account of German coinage, [Appendix V.]), implying a lowering of the ratio from 15 to 14 1⁄8. This proposed scheme was accepted, in comitia, in 1667, the fifth article of the resolution specially mentioning the infliction of numerous intruding base foreign divisional money. From this scheme Brandenburg and Saxony held off, maintaining that the ratio had not been sufficiently lowered, considering the condition of the production of gold; and, in the same year, by a Mint treaty between Frederick William of Brandenburg and the Elector of Saxony, the so-called Zinnaische standard was adopted for those two states. According to this standard, the Reichs thaler was raised to 105-kreutzer (1 florin 45 kreutzers) and a ratio of 13 5⁄9 was established.
The result of this action of Saxony and Brandenburg was to strip the three higher circles of their silver, and in two years (1669) they anxiously met again to consider the question, not only of the foreign base coin everywhere prevalent, but also of the damaging exchange "and ceaseless melting down and exchange of proper coin from the circles."
By a strenuous effort the three circles carried through the Reichstag of 1680 their resolution to reduce the Reichs thaler to 90 kreutzer (ratio 15 1⁄4). From this decision the Emperor stood apart, with Bavaria and Salzburg, in putting the Reichs thaler at 96 kreutzer.