Godfather of the franc: the French king, here Charles V.
Wikimedia / British Library

Misunderstandings with naming

But we also owe some coin names to misunderstandings, or even abusive terms. The ‘angster’, a double pfennig coin first evidenced around 1340 in the Basel area, probably got its name from angustus, the Latin word for narrow, low, mean. Whether this was a reference to the thin coinage or its low value is no longer known. But the coin name was certainly misunderstood when, in Ticino and northern Italy, it was translated with the dialect word meaning ‘be alarmed or afraid’ (spagurás, spagüras). Endowed with a charming Swiss ending, this little coin now known as a ‘spagürli’ is encountered in 15th-century Swiss written sources. Spagürli were subsequently also minted in Lucerne and in the bishopric of Sion.

Coins from the mint in Freiburg im Breisgau, on the other hand, were deliberately misconstrued: an attempt at representing the imperial eagle on a coin backfired badly, and because of its appearance it was mocked as a raven. Thanks to the so-called rappen currency union, this raven (or ‘rappe’) – now simply the name of the coin, as the image was adapted from one place to the next – was also minted in Swiss mints, and eventually found its way into the coinage of modern Switzerland as one hundredth of a franc. The batzen, first minted in Bern in 1492, had an even more difficult start. Known as ‘rollbatzen’ (clod of dirt or dung) due to a forced 21% devaluation, in Bern it was soon reinterpreted as bätz (bear), which no doubt was also connected with the intermittent acceptance of this widely faked coin type.

As you can see, Switzerland and its money has always been a fascinating business. Seen in this light, it is almost boring that these days we only pay with francs and rappen. But you can still allow yourself a little smile next time you’re out shopping and you pay with Frenchmen and ravens.

Francesco Della Casa

Othmar H. Ammann – builder of bridges