Frankfurt's Jewish community had been subject to a discriminatory per-capita entry toll — the Stättigkeit — for centuries, and the 1 Pfennig issues associated with this tax carry a history that outlasted emancipation itself. The 1819 date falls just after the Hep-Hep riots, a wave of anti-Jewish violence that swept German cities including Frankfurt in 1819, making the political timing of any official pattern strike that year particularly loaded.
Gold pattern strikes of base-denomination fiscally punitive coins are rare survivals. This piece almost certainly never entered circulation — struck as a presentation or archive piece before Frankfurt's absorption into the German Confederation reshaped its municipal coinage authority.
Frankfurt's Jewish community had been subject to a discriminatory per-capita entry toll — the Stättigkeit — for centuries, and the 1 Pfennig issues associated with this tax carry a history that outlasted emancipation itself. The 1819 date falls just after the Hep-Hep riots, a wave of anti-Jewish violence that swept German cities including Frankfurt in 1819, making the political timing of any official pattern strike that year particularly loaded.
Gold pattern strikes of base-denomination fiscally punitive coins are rare survivals. This piece almost certainly never entered circulation — struck as a presentation or archive piece before Frankfurt's absorption into the German Confederation reshaped its municipal coinage authority.