Munich Coinage Treaty

The Munich Coin Treaty of 1837 was a treaty agreed to by six southern German states which unified the currency of the states.

Agreed to on 25 August 1837, the six states agreed that the value of the gulden should be the same, regardless of which of the states issued it, and that the silver content on the gulden should be equal to 90 per cent of the coin's face value. (One reason for these provisions was that they were intended to prevent states from profiting by melting down other states' silver coins and using the silver to mint their own.) The treaty also established that coins minted in any of the six states was legal tender in all six states.

The Munich Coin Treaty in part inspired the 1838 Dresden Coinage Convention, by which the Zollverein attempted to standardise its currencies. However, although the Dresden Convention standardised currency exchange rates, it did not make coins legal tender extraterritorially.

The Munich Coin Treaty was initially agreed to by Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Nassau, Hesse-Darmstadt, and the Free City of Frankfurt. Later, Hesse-Kassel and Hamburg also agreed to the treaty.

References

• Clive Parry (ed), Consolidated Treaty Series (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 1969) vol. 87, p. 51 (text of treaty in German and English)
• John C. Edmunds and John E. Marthinsen, Wealth by Association: Global Prosperity Through Market Unification (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003) pp. 98–99.
• William Arthur Shaw, A History of Currency, 1252 to 1896 (New York : Augustus M. Kelley, 1967).