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Germany
150th Anniversary – Birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen
1968 J Silver 5 Mark 29mm (11.23 grams) 0.625 Silver (0.2251 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 121
BUNDESREPUBLIK DEUTSCHLAND 5 DEUTSCHE MARK 1968 J, Eagle.
· FRIEDRICH WILHELM RAIFFENSEN · 1818-1888, Raiffeisen facing 1/4 left.
Edge Lettering:
EINER FÜR ALLE · ALLE FÜR EINEN
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen (30 March 1818 – 11 March 1888) was a German mayor and cooperative pioneer. Several credit union systems and cooperative banks have been named after Raiffeisen, who pioneered rural credit unions.
Life
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen was born on 30 March 1818 at Hamm/Sieg (Westerwald). He was the seventh out of nine children. His father Gottfried Friedrich Raiffeisen was a farmer and also mayor of Hamm for a while. One can go back to his family’s origin until the 16th century in the Swabian-Franconian area. The family of his mother, Amalie Christiane Susanna Maria, born Lantzendörffer, came from the “Siegerland”. Leaving school at the age of 14 he received three years of education from a local pastor before he entered the military at the age of 17. His career in the military-led him to Cologne, Coblenz, and Sayn. An eye disease forced him to resign from the military service in 1843 and he went into public service. He was mayor of several towns: from 1845 he was mayor of Weyerbusch/Westerwald; from 1848 he was mayor of Flammersfeld/Westerwald; and finally, he was mayor of Heddesdorf from 1852 until late 1865, when, at the age of 47, his worsening health cut his career short; he had caught typhus in 1863 during an epidemic during which his wife had died. Since his small pension was not sufficient to meet the living of Raiffeisen’s family he initially started a small cigar factory and later on wine business. In 1867, he married the widow Maria Panseroth. She outlived him by 12 years and their marriage remained childless. He died on 11 March 1888 in Neuwied-Heddesdorf, shortly before his 70th birthday.
Work
Raiffeisen conceived of the idea of cooperative self-help during his tenure as the young mayor of Flammersfeld. He was inspired by observing the suffering of the farmers who were often in the grip of loan sharks. He founded the first cooperative lending bank, in effect the first rural credit union in 1864.
Motivated by the misery of the poor part of the population he founded during the starvation winter of 1846/47 the “Verein für Selbstbeschaffung von Brod und Früchten” (Association for Self-procurement of Bread and Fruits). He bought flour with the help of private donations.The bread was baked in a self-built bakery and distributed on credit to the poorest amongst the population. The bread society as well as the aid society founded in 1849 in Flammersfeld and the benevolent society created in 1854 in Heddesdorf were pre-cooperative societies based on the principle of benevolent assistance.
To secure the liquidity equalization between the small credit banks, in 1872 Raiffeisen created the first rural central bank at Neuwied, the “Rheinische Landwirtschaftliche Genossenschaftsbank” (Rhenish Agricultural Cooperative Bank). In 1881, Raiffeisen created a printing house in Neuwied that still exists today, carries his name and was merged in 1975 with the German cooperative publishing house “Deutscher Genossenschafts-Verlag”.
Philosophy
Raiffeisen stated that there is a connection between poverty and dependency.To fight poverty one should fight dependency first. Based on this idea he came up with the three ‘S’ formula: self-help, self-governance, and self-responsibility. Originally in German: Selbsthilfe, Selbstverwaltung, and Selbstverantwortung. When put into practice the necessary independence from charity, politics, and loan sharks could be established.
 Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany is a federal parliamentary republic in western-central Europe. It includes 16 constituent states and covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi) with a largely temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Berlin. With 81 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state in the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular migration destination in the world.
 Various Germanic tribes have occupied northern Germany since classical antiquity. A region named Germania was documented before 100 CE. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation.
 The rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states in 1871 into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918-1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The establishment of the Third Reich in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After 1945, Germany split into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990, the country was reunified.
In the 21st century, Germany is a great power and has the world’s fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the fifth-largest by PPP. As a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world’s third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a developed country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled and productive society. It upholds a social security and universal health care system, environmental protection and a tuition free university education.
Germany was a founding member of the European Union in 1993. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world. Known for its rich cultural history, Germany has been continuously the home of influential artists, philosophers, musicians, sportsmen, entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors.
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