Sachsenpfennig

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The Sachsenpfennig ("Saxon pfennig"), sometimes called the Wendenpfennig or the Hochrandpfennig ("high rim pfennig"), was a well-known coin of the pfennig type minted in the eastern part of the Stem Duchy of Saxony during the 10th and 11th centuries. It had an upturned perimeter and, next to the Otto Adelheid Pfennig was the most common pfennig type of its time. Sachsenpfennigs are the oldest coins minted in Saxony. Its different names represent a lack of clarity within mediaeval numismatics about the coin. Julius Menadier called the pfennig type of the 10th and 11th centuries with an upturned rim the Sachsenpfennig because it was minted in eastern Saxony. The older name Wendenpfennig ("Wend pfennig") is inappropriate as a pfennig that the Wends minted, since they still regarded the coins as ingots or so-called hacksilver and did not mint any coins themselves. According to Menadier, the use of hacksilver and coins are mutually exclusive. East of the Elbe among the Slavs (Wends) and Scandinavians (Vikings), the merchants had developed a so-called bullion economy. When paying, silver was cut into the form of ingots, jewellery and coins and weighed with scales and weights. Across the whole of the Slavic lands, hoards of silver weighing several kilogrammes have occasionally survived; they comprise German and West European denarii, Oriental dirhems and Scandinavian jewellery.