Item: i87531

Authentic Coin of:

Germany – German States – Frankfurt Free State
Archduke Johann of Austria Elected as Imperial Regent Vicar: 12 July 1848 – 20 December 1849
1848 Silver 2 Gulden 36mm (21.17 grams) 0.900 Silver (0.6138 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 338
* CONSTITUIRENDE VERSAMMLUNG I.D.F. STADT FRANKFURT 18. MAI 1848,
ERWÄHLT ZUM REICHSVERWESER ÜBER DEUTSCHLAND D. 29 IUNI 1848 * ERZHERZOG JOHANN VON OESTERREICH, Branches below inscription.
Edge Lettering:
ZWEY *** GULDEN ***

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Archduke John of Austria (German: Erzherzog Johann Baptist Joseph Fabian Sebastian von  -sterreich; 20 January 1782  ” 11 May 1859), a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, was an Austrian field marshal and imperial regent (Reichsverweser) of the short-lived German Empire during the Revolutions of 1848.

John was born in Florence, the thirteenth child of the Habsburg Archduke Leopold of Tuscany and Maria Louisa of Spain. He was baptized with the name of John Baptist Joseph Fabian Sebastian, after the patron saint of the Tuscan capital. In 1790, Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph II as the Holy Roman Emperor and his family moved from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the Imperial court in Vienna. Only two years later, John’s elder brother Francis II ascended the Imperial throne.

John’s native language was Italian, he learned to speak French and German fluently. Educated by the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller, he developed wide-ranging skills and interests, especially in the history and geography of the Alpine countries.

The toast to ‘German unity’ at Brühl

On 4 September 1842, King Frederick William IV of Prussia inaugurated new construction to the as yet incomplete Cologne Cathedral. Dignitaries from all over Germany and Austria were invited, including Archduke John and Chancellor Klemens Metternich. A farewell banquet was held in the Augustusburg Palace at Brühl. There, Frederick William toasted all of the guests who had fought in the Napoleonic War, including Archduke John, “whose name exhilarates us as a fresh breeze from the mountains.” As thanks to the King’s kind words, the Archduke remarked, “As long as Prussia and Austria, and as long as the rest of Germany wherever the German tongue is heard, are united, we shall be steadfast as the rocks of our mountains.” However, the newspapers reported a different text of these remarks: “No longer shall be known Austria or Prussia, but a single Germany, lofty and sublime, Germany united and strong as her own mountains.” This misquote was widely circulated among the reading public.

The Events of 1848

Even though the Archduke John did not consider himself a liberal, he promoted some liberal ideas. He was often in conflict with the rigid Habsburg court, especially because of his morganatic marriage, though he would never espouse rebellion. He had earned great recognition in the Styrian lands and, moreover, he gained general acceptance by his jovial manners and his marriage with a middle-class woman. The remarks he had reputedly made in favor of German unification at the banquet in 1842, added to circulating rumors that the Archduke was a man of political liberalism, even though he was kept very far from politics by the Court.

Head of the Austrian Government

Rioting in the streets of Vienna caused the Imperial household to flee to Innsbruck on 17 May 1848. Based on his reputation among the masses as a liberal and his personal character as a loyal prince of the reigning House, Archduke John was appointed on 16 June to be an effective viceroy in the absence of the Emperor. He was to both open the Constituent Diet and conduct the normal business of the government. By a proclamation dated 25 June and written entirely by himself, the Archduke assumed his responsibilities and set the date to open the Diet for 22 July 1848.

After he accepted the office of Regent of Germany on 5 July 1848 (see below), John maintained that he could not undertake his responsibilities in Frankfurt until he had fulfilled his responsibilities in Vienna. Therefore, he set out for Frankfurt on 8 July, the same day that the Austrian Ministry led by Baron Franz von Pillersdorf fell. After being appointed Regent in Frankfurt, he returned to Vienna on 17 July, and solemnly opened the Diet on 22 July as the Emperor’s representative. Shortly thereafter, the Archduke resigned his official duties and departed for Frankfurt. This caused the Diet to petition for the Emperor’s return to Vienna, and he did so on 12 August.

Regent of Germany

Upon the March Revolution of 1848, the Frankfurt Parliament discussed the appointment of an all-German government replacing the Federal Convention. On a proposal by the liberal politician Heinrich von Gagern, the assembly on 28 June 1848 voted for the establishment of a central authority (Provisorische Zentralgewalt) and on the next day a broad majority elected Archduke John regent of the realm (Reichsverweser).

Archduke John accepted the nomination as head of the short-lived German Empire on 5 July 1848, and on 12 July the delegates of the Federal Convention, in response to public pressure, ceded their powers to him. On July 15, the day he left for Vienna, the Regent appointed the ministers Anton von Schmerling, Johann Gustav Heckscher and Eduard von Peucker to office, completed by Prince Carl of Leiningen as minister president and head of government. Nevertheless, his political office did not offer many opportunities, though all laws had to be signed by him.

On 16 July 1848, War Minister von Peucker issued an order to all German Federal Army soldiers that, on 6 August 1848, they were to parade in honor of the Regent as the supreme commander of the Army in Germany. Upon his arrival in Vienna, the Archduke was greeted by Austrian War Minister Latour, who was quite upset with the interference of the provisional government in Austrian Army affairs. The whole Austrian Ministerial Council demanded action, and, as a result, the Archduke was forced to dispatch a formal complaint as Viceroy of Austria to himself as Regent of Germany.

First attempts by the government to obtain supreme command of the German Federal Army faced entrenched resistance from the member states. To strengthen support, the left-wing politician Robert von Mohl joined the Leiningen Cabinet on 9 August. Leiningen himself resigned on 6 September, after the Frankfurt assembly rejected to ratify the armistice of Malmö, signed by Prussia during the First Schleswig War. Minister Anton von Schmerling acted as head of government, until from November 1848 the cabinet gradually lost the support of the centrist Casino faction and finally its majority in parliament. Schmerling was forced to resign and on 17 December, Archduke John had to appoint Heinrich von Gagern new minister president, though he opposed his ‘Lesser German’ ideas.

By the terms of his Regency, Archduke John was forbidden to take part in the drafting of the Frankfurt Constitution, which was adopted on 28 March 1849 after lengthy negotiations led by Gagern. He pronounced against the strong position of Prussia and was determined to resign, but he was once more turned over by appeals from National Assembly President Eduard von Simson. When, in April 1849, King Frederick William IV of Prussia disappointed Gagern’s hopes and openly rejected the Constitution, Archduke John remained passive and reminded his Prime Minister of the terms of his service as Regent, forbidding his interference in the process. Prime Minister Gagern handed in his resignation on 10 May.

Prussia exerted pressure on the Regent to vacate the office that he had resigned, but the Archduke insisted that he would remain out of a sense of obligation, and had powerful backing from Austria’s Prime Minister, Prince Schwarzenberg, who was eager to stifle Prussian ambitions in Germany. Nevertheless, he departed for a prolonged stay at the health resort of Bad Gastein. At this point, the National Assembly was reduced to a rump parliament led by radicals and in opposition to the Regent. The Regency existed in name only, though the Archduke continued formal correspondence with Vienna and Berlin as such. He finally was allowed to resign from his office on 20 December 1849. When Archduke John came back to Frankfurt on a visit in 1858, he openly regretted the failure of the German unification.

Frankfurt (officially: Frankfurt am Main lit. “Frank ford at the Main”)) is a metropolis and the largest city of the German federal state of Hesse, and its 746,878 (2017) inhabitants make it the fifth-largest city of Germany after Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne. On the River Main (a tributary of the Rhine), it forms a continuous conurbation with the neighbouring city of Offenbach am Main, and its urban area has a population of 2.3 million. The city is at the centre of the larger Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, which has a population of 5.5 million and is Germany’s second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr Region. Since the enlargement of the European Union in 2013, the geographic centre of the EU is about 40 km (25 mi) to the east of Frankfurt’s central business district. Like France and Franconia, the city is named after the Franks. Frankfurt is the largest city in the Rhine Franconian dialect area (Franconian, Central German dialects).

Frankfurt was a city state, the Free City of Frankfurt, for nearly five centuries, and was one of the most important cities of the Holy Roman Empire, as a site of imperial coronations; it lost its sovereignty upon the collapse of the empire in 1806 and then permanently in 1866, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. It has been part of the federal state of Hesse since 1945. The city is culturally and ethnically diverse, with around half of the population, and a majority of young people, having a migration background. A quarter of the population are foreign nationals, including many expatriates.

Frankfurt is an alpha world city and a global hub for commerce, culture, education, tourism and transportation. It is the site of many global and European corporate headquarters. Frankfurt Airport is among the world’s busiest. Frankfurt is the major financial centre of the European continent, with the headquarters of the European Central Bank, German Federal Bank, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bank, DZ Bank, KfW, Commerzbank, several cloud and fintech startups and other institutes. Automotive, technology and research, services, consulting, media and creative industries complement the economic base. Frankfurt’s DE-CIX is the world’s largest internet exchange point. Messe Frankfurt is one of the world’s largest trade fairs. Major fairs include the Frankfurt Motor Show, the world’s largest motor show, the Music Fair, and the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest book fair.

Frankfurt is home to influential educational institutions, including the Goethe University, the UAS, the FUMPA, and graduate schools like the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Its renowned cultural venues include the concert hall Alte Oper, Europe’s largest English theatre and many museums (e.g. the Museumsufer ensemble with Städel and Liebieghaus, Senckenberg Natural Museum, Goethe House, and the Schirn art venue at the old town). Frankfurt’s skyline is shaped by some of Europe’s tallest skyscrapers. The city is also characterised by various green areas and parks, including the central Wallanlagen, the City Forest and two major botanical gardens, the Palmengarten and the University’s Botanical Garden. In electronic music, Frankfurt has been a pioneering city since the 1980s, with renowned DJs including Sven Väth, Marc Trauner, Scot Project, Kai Tracid, and the clubs Dorian Gray, U60311, Omen and Cocoon. In sports, the city is known as the home of the top tier football club Eintracht Frankfurt, the Löwen Frankfurt ice hockey team, the basketball club Frankfurt Skyliners, the Frankfurt Marathon and the venue of Ironman Germany.

Early history and Holy Roman Empire

Roman settlements were established in the area of the Römer, probably in the first century. Nida (Heddernheim) was also a Roman civitas capital.

Alemanni and Franks lived there, and by 794, Charlemagne presided over an imperial assembly and church synod, at which Franconofurd (alternative spellings end with -furt and -vurd) was first mentioned.

Frankfurt was one of the most important cities in the Holy Roman Empire. From 855, the German kings and emperors were elected and crowned in Aachen. From 1562, the kings and emperors were crowned in Frankfurt, initiated for Maximilian II. This tradition ended in 1792, when Franz II was elected. His coronation was deliberately held on Bastille Day, 14 July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. The elections and coronations took place in St. Bartholomäus Cathedral, known as the Kaiserdom (Emperor’s Cathedral), or its predecessors.

The Frankfurter Messe (Frankfurt Trade Fair) was first mentioned in 1150. In 1240, Emperor Friedrich II granted an imperial privilege to its visitors, meaning they would be protected by the empire. The fair became particularly important when similar fairs in French Beaucaire lost attraction around 1380. Book trade fairs began in 1478.

In 1372, Frankfurt became a Reichsstadt (Imperial Free City), i.e., directly subordinate to the Holy Roman Emperor and not to a regional ruler or a local nobleman.

In 1585, Frankfurt traders established a system of exchange rates for the various currencies that were circulating to prevent cheating and extortion. Therein lay the early roots for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Frankfurt managed to remain neutral during the Thirty Years’ War, but suffered from the bubonic plague that refugees brought to the city. After the war, Frankfurt regained its wealth.

Impact of French revolution and the Napoleonic Wars

Following the French Revolution, Frankfurt was occupied or bombarded several times by French troops. It remained a free city until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1805/6. In 1806, it became part of the principality of Aschaffenburg under the Fürstprimas (Prince-Primate), Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg. This meant that Frankfurt was incorporated into the confederation of the Rhine. In 1810, Dalberg adopted the title of a Grand Duke of Frankfurt. Napoleon intended to make his adopted son Eugène de Beauharnais, already Prince de Venise (“prince of Venice”, a newly established primogeniture in Italy), Grand Duke of Frankfurt after Dalberg’s death (since the latter as a Catholic bishop had no legitimate heirs). The Grand Duchy remained a short episode lasting from 1810 to 1813, when the military tide turned in favour of the Anglo-Prussian lead allies that overturned the Napoleonic order. Dalberg abdicated in favour of Eugène de Beauharnais, which of course was only a symbolic action, as the latter effectively never ruled after the ruin of the French armies and Frankfurt’s takeover by the allies.

Frankfurt as a fully sovereign state

After Napoleon’s final defeat and abdication, the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) dissolved the grand-duchy and Frankfurt became a fully sovereign city state with a republican form of government. Frankfurt entered the newly founded German Confederation (till 1866) as a free city, becoming the seat of its Bundestag, the confederal parliament where the nominally presiding Habsburg Emperor of Austria was represented by an Austrian “presidential envoy”.

After the ill-fated revolution of 1848, Frankfurt was the seat of the first democratically elected German parliament, the Frankfurt Parliament, which met in the Frankfurter Paulskirche (St. Paul’s Church) and was opened on 18 May 1848. The institution failed in 1849 when the Prussian king declared that he would not accept “a crown from the gutter”. In the year of its existence, the assembly developed a common constitution for a unified Germany, with the Prussian king as its monarch.

Frankfurt after the loss of sovereignty

Frankfurt lost its independence after the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 when Prussia annexed several smaller states, among them the Free City of Frankfurt. Frankfurt had stayed neutral in the war,^{[citation needed]} but its free press bothered the Prussians and they used the opportunity to occupy the city by force: Bismarck had been an ambassador to the German Confederation there and constantly quarrelled with the local press. The Prussian administration incorporated Frankfurt into its province of Hesse-Nassau. The Prussian occupation and annexation was perceived as a great injustice in Frankfurt, which retained its distinct western European, urban and cosmopolitan character. The formerly independent towns of Bornheim and Bockenheim were incorporated in 1890.

In 1914, the citizens founded the University of Frankfurt, later named Goethe University Frankfurt. This marked the only civic foundation of a university in Germany; today it is one of Germany’s largest.

From 6 April to 17 May 1920, following military intervention to put down the Ruhr uprising, Frankfurt was occupied by French troops. The French claimed that Articles 42 to 44 of the peace treaty of Versailles concerning the demilitarisation of the Rhineland had been broken. In 1924, Ludwig Landmann became the first Jewish mayor of the city, and led a significant expansion during the following years. During the Nazi era, the synagogues of the city were destroyed.

Frankfurt was severely bombed in World War II (1939-1945). About 5,500 residents were killed during the raids, and the once-famous medieval city centre, by that time the largest in Germany, was almost completely destroyed. It became a ground battlefield on 26 March 1945, when the Allied advance into Germany was forced to take the city in contested urban combat that included a river assault. The 5th Infantry Division and the 6th Armored Division of the United States Army captured Frankfurt after several days of intense fighting, and it was declared largely secure on 29 March 1945.

After the end of the war, Frankfurt became a part of the newly founded state of Hesse, consisting of the old Hesse-(Darmstadt) and the Prussian Hesse provinces. The city was part of the American Zone of Occupation of Germany. The Military Governor for the United States Zone (1945-1949) and the United States High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG) (1949-1952) had their headquarters in the IG Farben Building, intentionally left undamaged by the Allies’ wartime bombardment.

Frankfurt was the original choice for the provisional capital city of the newly founded state of West Germany in 1949. The city constructed a parliament building that was never used for its intended purpose (it housed the radio studios of Hessischer Rundfunk). 

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.