Item: i96961

Authentic Coin of:

Austria – 600th Anniversary of the Vienna University – Commemorative issue
1965 Proof Silver 50 Schilling 34mm (19.91 grams) 0.900 Silver (0.5787 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 2898  |  Mintage: 37,000  | Obverse
1365 UNIVERSITÄT.WIEN 1965 RUDOLF DER STIFTER, Crowned head of Rudolf IV Der Stifter three-quarters to right.
 · REPUBLIK · 50 SCHILLING ÖSTERREICH above and within a circle of shields.
Edge Lettering: ~*~ FÜNFZIG SCHILLING

You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.

The University of Vienna (German: Universität Wien) is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is one of the oldest universities in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich history, the University of Vienna has developed into one of the largest universities in Europe, and also one of the most renowned, especially in the Humanities. It is associated with 15 Nobel prize winners and has been the academic home to a large number of scholars of historical as well as of academic importance.

Rudolf IV der Stifter (“the Founder”) (1 November 1339 – 27 July 1365) was a scion of the House of Habsburg and Duke (self-proclaimed Archduke) of Austria and Duke of Styria and Carinthia from 1358, as well as Count of Tyrol from 1363 and first Duke of Carniola from 1364 until his death. After the Habsburgs got nothing from the decree of the Golden Bull in 1356, he gave order to draw up the “Privilegium Maius”, a fake document to empower the Austrian rulers.

Born in Vienna, Rudolf was the eldest son of Duke Albert II of Austria and his wife Joanna of Pfirt. One of the third generation of Habsburg dukes in Austria, he was the first to be born within the duchy. Therefore, he considered Austria his home, a sentiment that no doubt communicated itself to his subjects and contributed to his popularity. Faced with the Habsburgs’ loss of the Imperial crown upon the assassination of his grandfather King Albert I of Germany in 1308, Rudolf was one of the most energetic and active rulers of Austria in the late Middle Ages, and it was said of him that as a young man he already had the air of a king.

In 1357 he was married to Catherine of Luxembourg, a daughter of Emperor Charles IV . Eager to compete with his mighty father-in-law, who had made the Kingdom of Bohemia and its capital Prague a radiant center of Imperial culture, Rudolf desired to raise the importance of his residence Vienna to a comparable or greater height.

For more than a century, the Habsburg dukes had chafed at the Popes’ failure to make Vienna the seat of its own diocese, a status that they considered appropriate for the capital of a duchy. Instead the city parish was subordinate to the Bishops of Passau, who had excellent connections to the Pope, apparently dooming Vienna’s prospects in this regard. Rudolf, however, resorted to something which could be considered imposture: He initiated the creation of a “metropolitan cathedral chapter” at the church of St. Stephen (which, according to the name, should be assigned to a bishop), whose members wore red garments as cardinals do. The provost of the chapter received the title of an “Archchancellor of Austria”.

Rudolf extended St. Stephen’s Cathedral, with the construction of its gothic nave being started under Rudolf’s rule. The construction efforts can be seen as an attempt to compete with St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Rudolf had himself and his wife depicted on a cenotaph at the cathedral’s entrance.

Similarly, by founding the University of Vienna in 1365, Rudolf sought to match Charles IV’s founding of the Charles University of Prague in 1348. Still known as Alma Mater Rudolphina today, the University of Vienna is the oldest continuously operating university in the German-speaking world. However, a faculty of theology, which was considered crucial for a university at that time, was not established until 1385, twenty years after Rudolf’s death.

To improve the economy of Vienna Rudolf introduced many other measures, including the supervision by the mayor of sales of real property, instituted to prevent sales to the dead hand, i.e., to prevent economically unproductive ownership by the Church. Rudolf also managed to establish a relatively stable currency, the so-called Wiener Pfennig (Vienna Penny).

Rudolf is best known for another bluff, the forgery of the Privilegium Maius, which de facto put him on par with the seven Prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire, compensating for Austria’s failure to receive an electoral vote in the Golden Bull of 1356 issued by Emperor Charles IV. The title of Archduke (Erzherzog), invented by Rudolf, became an honorific title of all males of the House of Habsburg from the 16th century.

In 1363, Rudolf entered into a contract of inheritance with widowed Countess Margaret of Gorizia-Tyrol upon the death of her only son Meinhard III, which actually brought the County of Tyrol under Austrian rule only after her death in 1369 since Margraret’s brother-in-law Duke Stephen II of Bavaria had invaded the country. In 1364 Rudolf declared the Carinthian March of Carniola a duchy and the next year established the Lower Carniolan town of Novo Mesto (in present-day Slovenia), whose German name Rudolfswert was given in his honor. In the same time, he concluded another contract of inheritance with his father-in-law Emperor Charles IV, providing for mutual inheritance between the Habsburg and Luxembourg dynasties.

In spite of the high-flying (and maybe sometimes megalomaniac) character of his plans, he managed to modernize his territories and his city, the prominence of which considerably increased. His untimely death without issue halted further progress, however. His younger brothers Albert III and Leopold III, who were to rule jointly under the Rudolfinische Hausordnung (Rudolfinian House Rules), began to quarrel ceaselessly and ultimately agreed to divide the Habsburg territories between them according to the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg. It was Leopold’s descendant Frederick V of Austria, elected King of the Romans in 1440 and sole ruler over all Austrian lands from 1457, who reaped the fruit of Rudolf’s efforts and laid the foundations of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Rudolf died suddenly at Milan in 1365 aged 25. His and his wife’s mortal remains are buried at the Ducal Crypt underneath the Stephansdom in Vienna.

Austria, officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich), is a federal republic and a landlocked country of over 8.5 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,879 square kilometres (32,386 sq mi). Austria’s terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and Austrian German in its standard form is the country’s official language. Other local official languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene.

The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire. From the time of the Reformation, many Northern German princes, resenting the authority of the Emperor, used Protestantism as a flag of rebellion. The Thirty Years War, the influence of the Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of France, the rise of the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Napoleonic invasions all weakened the power of the Emperor in the North of Germany, but in the South, and in non-German areas of the Empire, the Emperor and Catholicism maintained control. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria was able to retain its position as one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. Following Napoleon’s defeat, Prussia emerged as Austria’s chief competitor for rule of a larger Germany. Austria’s defeat by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 cleared the way for Prussia to assert control over the rest of Germany. In 1867, the empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary. After the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, Austria was left out of the formation of a new German Empire, although in the following decades its politics, and its foreign policy, increasingly converged with those of the Prussian-led Empire. During the 1914 July Crisis that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, Germany guided Austria in issuing the ultimatum to Serbia that led to the declaration of World War I.

After the collapse of the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire in 1918 at the end of World War I, Austria adopted and used the name the Republic of German-Austria (Deutschösterreich, later Österreich) in an attempt for union with Germany, but was forbidden due to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919). The First Austrian Republic was established in 1919. In the 1938 Anschluss, Austria was occupied and annexed by Nazi Germany.^[14] This lasted until the end of World War II in 1945, after which Germany was occupied by the Allies and Austria’s former democratic constitution was restored. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state, ending the occupation. In the same year, the Austrian Parliament created the Declaration of Neutrality which declared that the Second Austrian Republic would become permanently neutral.

Today, Austria is a parliamentary representative democracy comprising nine federal states. The capital and largest city, with a population exceeding 1.7 million, is Vienna. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world, with a nominal per capita GDP of $52,216 (2014 est.). The country has developed a high standard of living and in 2014 was ranked 21st in the world for its Human Development Index. Austria has been a member of the United Nations since 1955, joined the European Union in 1995, and is a founder of the OECD. Austria also signed the Schengen Agreement in 1995, and adopted the euro in 1999.