Historic collections of money

The collection held by the Deutsche Bundesbank's Money Museum dates back to the days of the Deutsche Reichsbank. During and immediately after the First World War, the Reichsbank's branches and central cash office in Berlin amassed large holdings of gold and silver coin, partly through purchases and partly through deliveries of gold by the general public.

The idea of putting the coin holdings and the paper money collection on public display at the Reichsbank in Berlin was suggested in 1934. An independent division was established within the Reichsbank’s central cash office; in 1935, this division was referred to for the first time as the Reichsbankmuseum. It was subsequently enlarged.

In February 1945, shortly before the occupation of Berlin at the end of the Second World War, parts of the coin collection were packed up and taken for storage in the potash mine in Merkers, Thuringia. After the end of the war, allied troops seized the coins discovered in Merkers. They were taken to the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden and, in 1951, were placed under the administration of the Reichsbank’s trustee. These remnants of the former Reichsbank collection were sold to the Bank deutscher Länder in 1954.

From this very heterogeneous base, the coin collection has been continuously and systematically expanded. It now contains some 90,000 coins from all over the world from antiquity to the present day. The paper money collection, which was recreated from scratch after the Second World War, is also universal. At around 255,000 specimens, it is one of the largest of its kind in the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, the collection contains a wide range of pre-coin payment media and numerous museum exhibits connected with money.

Enquiries about numismatics and the history of money should be addressed to numismatik@bundesbank.de.