Frankfurt's Jewish community was barred from using the city's official coinage for internal transactions and instead issued this copper pfennig for circulation within the Judengasse, the walled ghetto to which the city's Jews had been confined since the medieval period. The token's common name, "Judenpfennig," reflects that enforced segregation directly. By the time these were struck, the ghetto walls had already been torn down during the French occupation — yet the city moved swiftly after Napoleon's defeat to restore legal restrictions on Frankfurt's Jews, stripping rights that had briefly been extended.
The tokens were struck across a three-year window that coincides almost exactly with the reactionary rollback codified in Frankfurt's 1816 revised statutes.
Frankfurt's Jewish community was barred from using the city's official coinage for internal transactions and instead issued this copper pfennig for circulation within the Judengasse, the walled ghetto to which the city's Jews had been confined since the medieval period. The token's common name, "Judenpfennig," reflects that enforced segregation directly. By the time these were struck, the ghetto walls had already been torn down during the French occupation — yet the city moved swiftly after Napoleon's defeat to restore legal restrictions on Frankfurt's Jews, stripping rights that had briefly been extended.
The tokens were struck across a three-year window that coincides almost exactly with the reactionary rollback codified in Frankfurt's 1816 revised statutes.