By Cinatra Alvares

Michael Alram delivered an informative lecture on ‘The Coin Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna and the Maria Theresa Thaler as International Currency’ at the Yarmouk Cultural Centre on Monday evening, part of the Dar Al Athar Al Islamiyyah’s weekly lecture series in its 25th cultural season.

Alram is the Director of the Coin Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna and Vice-President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His research focuses an Ancient and Medieval numismatics and monetary history. He has extensively worked on the coinage of the Roman Empire, the monetary history of Iran and Central Asia in pre-Islamic times, as well as on Austria’s monetary history. His ability to reach an audience can be seen is his exhibitions at the Kunsthistorisches Museum and many international exhibition projects.

He began his talk stating, “Since millennia people have been interested in old coins and precious objects as historical documents. Princes saw buried hordes comprising gold and silver coins discovered on their grounds as a welcome income and addition to the treasury. These special metal coins were incorporated in the treasuries out of which evolved many later art collections. These coins were also important symbols of the dynastic connections, authority and were highly valued and bore witness to a rulers ancestors and precursors.”

Alram continued to express that coin collections are among the world’s oldest museum collections. One of them is the coin collection at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, which evolved out of the collection assembled by the Habsburg dynasty who continued to enlarge and augment it by adding contemporary numismatic objects. Over the centuries the collections holdings grew to around 600,000 artefacts dating from three millennia. Today it is among the five largest and most important coin collections in the world. A special focus of the collection lies in the coin production of the Habsburg’s themselves — the Thaler production of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) which is of special interest, since the Maria Theresa Thaler became an international currency which circulated across Africa, Arabia and well beyond. He showed the audience one of the most famous pieces in the museum’s collection of the Roman times which was part of a huge gold hoard discovered in 1797 near the little village of Szilagysomlya. The gold medal he drew attention to was commissioned by Emperor Constantine The Great for his son Constantius II and struck in 330-33. Alram shared that while the coin was very prestigious for the viewer it also possessed a significance for its future owner.

“The prestigious character of this piece is evident of course from its extraordinary value on the one hand and from the choice of images and the message it conveys on the other. Constantine is portrayed as the light of the Romans and the ruler legitimized by God together with his two sons as it were immortalized in the glory of the Constantine dynasty. You see him standing in the middle between his sons and out of the cloud the hand of God comes out and puts a wreath on his head”, he said, adding that the medallion not only contributed to exalting the imperial Constantine family but would also have been an object of extraordinary prestige for its later owner, most probably a Germanic chieftain.

The coin framed in an ornate setting attached to which is a loop at the top. It was evidently worn as a pendant, a supposition Alram noted was confirmed also by the clear signs of wear on its reverse. The setting, he put forth, was probably made in a Germanic goldsmith workshop and in this way adaptive to the taste and fashion of the Germanic princes of the time.

Coming back to the coin collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which evolved out of the collection of the Habsburgs who ruled in Austria for more than 600 years, he showed the audience photos of the wooden coin cabinets in which these coins still are stored today. In another slide of his presentation he presented a view of the museum’s permanent exhibition with the original showcases when the museum was opened in 1819 affirming it a historic exhibition.

He shared that the oldest preserved inventory of the collection dates back to 1547 and was already comprised of several thousand items, primarily coins of the ancient Roman emperors. The reason for this Alram pointed out, was perhaps because the Habsburgs saw the Roman emperors as the legendary ancestors of their own dynasty. He shared a famous painting by Tizian at the museum from 1567-68 depicting Jacopo Strada an Art collector who was also Director of the Imperial Treasury under Emperor Ferdinand I at the same time that of the inventory of the first coin collection. He shared that the painting shows Jacobo Strada collected not only ancient sculptures from Greek and Roman times but he collected also coins some of which went into the Imperial Treasury of Ferdinand I.

Alram informed that the coin collection was also a particular favourite of two 18th century Habsburg rulers, Emperor Charles VI and his son-in-law Emperor Francis I, the husband of Maria Theresa. Charles VI loved numismatics and intervened personally in contemporary coinage to enhance the artistic and technical quality of his own coin production and even founded an engravers academy in the middle of Vienna which became very famous throughout Europe.

Alram showed the audience a photo of Charles VI painted on the fresco in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, “What is important for us is the little young man who stands at his side. He holds in his hand a coin album of Charles VI which he always took with him when he travelled abroad so that he was able to have always some of his beloved coins with him.”

Charles VI’s son-in-law and Emperor Francis I, the husband of Maria Theresa was another important collector of modern coins. He made the most of his exalted rank of Emperor to acquire specially rare examples from all over Europe, not least with some political pressure to avoid expenses. Alram shared that the findings of scholarly historical research and new focal points added in the 19th