I recently picked up a new piece for my collection that isoutside of my normal collecting habits. This piece appealed to mefor multiple reasons. Not only does it have a stunning reversebut it is a numismatic item with a numismatic topic. It doesn'tget better than this for me.

This medal was produced to honor the passing of Franz Neumannthe director of Coin Cabinets at the Wien Museum in ViennaAustria in 1816. Here is a short history of this amazing museumand its holdings.

Coin Collection
The Coin Collection is one of the five largest and most importantcoin collections in the world. With some 600,000 objects fromthree millennia, it contains not only coins, but also papermoney, medallions, orders, etc. Some 2,000 objects can be seen inthe three halls housing the permanent display, which representsonly a small part of the holdings.

The first hall offers an overview of the history anddevelopment of the medal from its origins in Italy around 1400 upto the 20th century. Austrian and European orders and medals ofhonor are likewise presented here. The second hall focuses on thehistory of coin and paper money, from pre-monetary forms ofpayment and natural monies to the invention of the coin in the7th century B.C. in the region of the Lydian coast and on up tothe 20th century. The third hall is reserved for specialexhibitions.

History of the collection
The interest in old coins goes back a long way. For rulers,discoveries of buried treasures-insofar as these contained coinsmade of precious metals-represented a welcome increase in theirsupplies of gold and silver. Either the pieces were melted downfor their metal, or they were admitted to the ruler's hoard. Itwas from just such hoards that some of the later art collectionsfirst arose. This fact puts coin collections among the world'soldest museum related institutions. This also applies to theVienna Coin Cabinet, which arose from the Habsburg collection,which had been continuously maintained and expanded.

The oldest extant inventory was established around 1547 underFerdinand I (1503-1564). The coins listed by Leopold Heyperger,the emperor's treasurer, are almost all of ancient Romanorigin.

Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595), ruler of Tirol, andlikewise an enthusiastic collector of art objects, had his owncoin collection. The cabinets in which he stored his coins stillexist today: they are kept in the Vienna Coin Cabinet and atAmbras Castle.

Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612), who made his imperial seat ofPrague into a cultural center, likewise expanded the holdings ofthe Habsburg coin collection and distinguished himself above allas a patron of the medalist's art.

But it was only a century after Rudolf's death that theImperial Coin Cabinet was to truly awaken and come into its own.Emperor Charles VI (1685-1740) appointed the Swedish academicCarl Gustav Heraeus as Inspector of Medals and Antiquities in1712. Heraeus was assigned the task of combining Ferdinand'scollection from the Court Library, the Treasury of ArchdukeLeopold Wilhelm housed at the Stallburg, and the Coin Collectionof Ambras Castle in order to establish a unified imperial cabinetat a single location.

Emperor Francis I Stephen of Lorraine (1708-1765), husband ofMaria Theresia (1717-1780), added a new dimension to the imperialcoin collecting policy. He placed his main emphasis on coinagethat was modern at the time. The year 1748 is one of thehighpoints in the history of the Numismatic Collection in Vienna.At the time, Francis I Stephen of Lorraine ordered that theNumophylacium Carolino-Austriacum and the Numophylaciumimperatoris Francisci I be combined. The overall inventoryprepared for this occasion listed nearly 50,000 items, including21,000 ancient coins.

In the year 1774, the secularized Jesuit priest JosephHilarius Eckhel was appointed head of the Coin Cabinet, and thisman was to become an important figure for ancient numismatics ingeneral: His system of categorizing coins according to geographicand chronological criteria, known as the "Eckhelsche Ordnung," isstill in use today.

Furthermore, Eckhel's ten-volume Doctrina nummorum veterumachieved worldwide fame and admiration for the Imperial Cabinetfor the first time. During the 19th century, the findings ofother historical disciplines were to further transform the fieldof numismatics. Purely descriptive numismatics was joined by aninterest in the history of money as such, a fact which also leadto the expansion of collecting activities. Today, the CoinCabinet contains far more than just coins, including otherinstruments as well such as paper money and paper securities, taxstamps, tokens and tickets, seals and seal stamps, coin scalesand weights, orders, medals of honor and historic coin and medalminting stamps. In this, the Coin Cabinet has also become acollection point for documents that represent money in all itsforms and functions.

Upon the opening of the newly established KunsthistorischesMuseum on Vienna's Ring Road in 1891, the various imperialcollections-which up to then had been housed in variousbuildings-were finally brought together in one place. The"Cabinet of Coins and Antiquities" was initially kept in rooms onthe first floor before being moved to the second floor in 1899.Since 1900, the Coin Cabinet has existed separately from theAntiquity Collection as a collection in its own right.

Neumann, Franz de Paula
November 22nd, 1744 - April 7th, 1816 Vienna

In the wake of the abolition of the Dorotheerstiftes inVienna, Neumann sought employment at Court (in the library or inthe numismatic collection), which he first became second stringedDirector under Verot without pay in February 1783 in thenumismatic modern collection. After Verots death Neumann tookover his salaried Director position on November 5, 1786. AfterEckhels's death, on June 1, 1798, he received the Directorateof ancient Numismatics which put both cabinets once again underthe leadership of a Director.

Neumann was born in Krems on November 22nd, 1744. When he was9 years old he came to Buttelstedt regulirten Chorherrn to St.Dorothea in Vienna as a choirboy.

Harnisch, Johann Augustin (auch Johann Baptist)
July 22nd, 1777, died April 24th, 1826 Vienna

First employed in Prague in the year 1800 at the Mint inVienna. From here his career advanced up to the Chamber medallistand a Director of the engraver Academy in 1811.

Thank you to Dr. Heinz Winter from Kunsthistorisches MuseumWien for his help with biographical information on Mr. Harnischand Mr. Neumann. This information was sent to me in German and Ihave done my best (poorly) to translate in to English. Most ofthe other information and pictures came from the museum websiteat http://www.khm.at/en/visit/collections/coin-collection/