5 Korún Pattern

Slovakia declared independence on March 14, 1939 — the day before German troops occupied Bohemia and Moravia — and the new state immediately needed its own coinage. Pattern pieces from 1939 represent the earliest design trials conducted under the First Slovak Republic, a clerical-fascist regime under Jozef Tiso that existed entirely under German protection. Most were never approved for circulation in their tested form, making surviving examples products of a bureaucratic process that moved faster than the political situation warranted.