This day marks the 500th anniversary of the end of the Reichstag in Worms, which took place from January 27th to May 26th, 1521.

This Reichstag is known today above all because Martin Luther professed his doctrine of the faith there and as a result, with the Edict of Worms, the imperial ban was imposed on him.

From a contemporary perspective, however, that was just one of several pressing issues dealt with at the Reichstag - including monetary reform. Even historians usually do not pay sufficient attention to the decisive importance that the Reichstag had for the German monetary system in the centuries to come.

On the occasion of his election in 1519, Emperor Charles V had to promise to work together with the electors, princes and estates of the empire to use “diligence” to remedy the “complaints and shortages of munz”.

These difficulties and deficiencies in coinage related, among other things, to a general decline in the value of money, to inferior or unavailable small coins and to a downright Babylonian currency confusion.

Even the smallest rulers in the empire issued their own coins.

A permanent fixation of the constantly fluctuating value ratio between gold and silver coins was a long-cherished wish.

It didn't fail because of ideas, but because of the implementation

How persistently the question of the monetary order had eluded a solution is evident from the fact that in the course of the Worms Reichstag in 1521 only the demands that had already been made at a Reichstag in Augsburg in 1500 were taken up again. Incidentally, there had also been complained that the "several articles" on coinage that had been decided two years earlier at a Reichstag in Freiburg "had not been carried out". The different monetary policy interests of the many territorial lords united in the empire had prevented progress in monetary policy for more than 20 years.

The Reichsregiment, which was established at the Worms Reichstag, made a new approach possible. It consisted of Archduke Ferdinand as the emperor's governor and 22 other people appointed by the emperor and the estates. The imperial regiment embodied the government of the empire in the absence of the emperor and gained special importance as a result, because Charles V did not stay in the German-speaking area for almost a decade after the Worms Reichstag in 1521. He did not return to Bologna until 1530 after his coronation as emperor and moved into Augsburg in June to open the Reichstag there.

According to the farewell of the Worms Reichstag on May 26, 1521, the reorganization of the coinage as well as the measures and weights as well as the monopolies should fall to the Reichsregiment. With this, the creative power in the area of ​​coinage was formally passed from the emperor to the imperial regiment, which invited experts in April 1522 so that “untradable disadvantages” could be prevented in the future. As early as April 1522, the Mint Committee in Nuremberg, set up by the Reich Regiment, presented a corresponding report with which the diversity of coins in the empire was to be curbed and the value ratio of gold and silver coins to be determined. Due to the different currency cultures in the territory of the Reich, it was decided to divide it up into coin districts. In addition, the new coins must be clearly marked with dates,in order to be able to distinguish them from the old forms.

The division of the imperial territory into different minting districts was also intended to have a long-term effect, which was adopted, further differentiated and improved in the following years via the imperial coin regulations of Esslingen (1524) and Augsburg (1551 and 1559).

The tentative beginnings of a monetary union

At the Reichstag in Worms in 1521, core elements of future German monetary policy were thus created.

The decision to delegate the complex issues from the highest political level to a committee of mint masters and other experts who were able to quickly develop possible solutions was groundbreaking.

The division of the empire into individual, interconnected currency areas within which the empire's common monetary policy was to be implemented and enforced was also of essential importance.

Not least, thanks to the decisions of the Reichstag in Worms, we owe the dates that are still stamped on our coins to this day. Above all, however, the events in 1521 show how great the interest was in a uniform, stable currency. Other political concerns were subordinated to this goal.