Ottos und Brunos in Oelde – Ein Münzschatzfund der 1270/80er-Jahre

Yes, thank you very much and good afternoon, everyone. Ottos and Brunos in Oelde, that's how I named this lecture a bit flabby, which is supposed to report on a new coin treasure of the later 13th century. Ottos and Brunos, these are these two gentlemen here, as you can see on the front pages of your coins. On the back you can see the heads of Saint Paul or Peter. And these are in a slightly larger number, Otto or Paul a little more, Bruno or Petrus a little less, appeared in a new coin treasure, which was published on the mark of the city of Oelde in the district of Warenburg, i.e. in the southeast of Münsterland. And, as is so often the case, it was a smuggler who did the job for the numismatist. Because on March 13, 2022, the licensed smuggler René Metzger from Oelde discovered 92 coins on a field in the Menninghausen farm. They were scattered over a larger area in the direction of the air, so they were obviously flown up during the last agricultural processing of the area. No container was discovered. No additional finds or archaeological findings were made. The finder barked the coins, but immediately reported the find and exemplarily at the Außenstelle Münster of the LWL Archeology for Westphalia, whereupon a visit to the find site and a search took place a few days later, which, however, ended without further coins. After the harvest, a follow-up excavation was carried out at the end of July, in which the excavator moved an area of about 10 by 10 meters around the center of the previous find area and the excavation was searched. But only four coins were found. In early August, the smuggler went to the area again, after the field had just been dug up. Everything had run away, bad signals had been dug up and he discovered 19 more coins. And in January of this year, he was back on the field and detected 17 coins, but now scattered a little further than the previous ones. Mr. Metzger intends to continue excavating the area in the coming years and it can be assumed that further coins, which are part of the find complex, may even be discovered in greater numbers. In this respect, today is first of all an interim report. Indeed, Mr. Metzger was there last Tuesday and brought over another 42 coins in a nice box, which are not yet priced in today. That's why we look at it. I have processed 130 coins so far. What was in it? 79 pieces, Otto or Paulus, namely Bishopric of Münster Pfennige, Otto II of the Lippe, from the nominal Alles Pfennige. In addition, a coin of the successor, Bishop Gerhard von der Marck. Then 32 coins of Bruno or Petrus, namely Bishopric of Osnabrückische Pfennige of Bishop Bruno von Isenberg in two types, both from the town of Osnabrück. Look at the back, once the so-called round type with 22 pieces and the round type with 9 pieces. Then there are 7 pfennige of the successor, so three times after, Conrad von Riedberg, 1270 to 1297, two coins from the town of Osnabrück and five from the second town of Wiedenbrück. Seven pieces are Conrad or Patroklos, if you will, namely Duchess-Westphalian embossments of the Kölner Archbishop Conrad von Hochstaden from Soest. Several variants of a type, a total of six pfennige and a halfling. And finally, there are individual pieces, all pfennige, once of the noble Lord Bernhard III of Zur Lippe from Lippstadt, then of Count Engelbert von der Marck from Hamm and of the Roman-German king Wilhelm von Holland from the town of Dortmund. From the temporal aspect, there are 79 coins of Münster, 32 of Osnabrück, 7 of Soest, one from Lippstadt and one from Dortmund, so 120 pieces, all of which are certainly from the 1250s. Ten coins opposite, which may or may not have been created later, namely up to the 1270s, 1280s. So there are clearly two time stages to distinguish. The main part is up to two decades older than the small group of younger coins. But these younger coins appeared at exactly the same location, mixed homogeneously with the older coins, so that they date the entire complex to the 1270s and 1280s. Let's look at the map, which illustrates the location of the coins, and also the location of the finds, marked in red here. Then it becomes clear how clearly the coins located near the west are dominated here, followed by the Osnabrück coins located near the north. Smaller parts then come from Soest, which is located near the south, and Wiedenbrück, which is located directly east. The individual pieces from Lippstadt, which are also located near the south-east, and the coins from Ham and Dortmund, which are located south-west. The coins from Wiedenbrück, Osnabrück, Ham and Dortmund are not only of equal value, but are also of the same small, thicker kind. The coins from Soest and Lippstadt are a bit wider and lighter in terms of weight, and also a bit thinner. So they are not of equal value in the middle. But they could obviously be well integrated into the coin system that was located north of the Lippe, at the location of the find. Of the 130 coins so far, we have seven, no, we have 128 Pfennige, and so far only two Helbling coins, so half-Pfennige, are opposite, whereas one is so light, that it might even be a quarter-Pfennige. As is the case with every treasure find, especially with a medieval one, the treasure find from Oelde, in addition to the well-known, but nevertheless research-worthy material, also offers something extraordinary or even new. Once this Helbling here from Osnabrück, which was at least not described in the literature so far. You knew the Pfennig, and this piece from Ham is certainly one of the rarest coins among the well-known in the treasure find. One type of coin, however, was unknown until now, and I have also completely omitted it until now. A so-called addition, that is a numismatic terminus for a coin, that mimics the established types of other coin towns. And if you deal with this piece now, then the question is, where does it belong? And I would like to bring Herford into the conversation for this. An East-Westphalian woman's pen, which has shaped it at the latest since the late 11th century. And there are now other types of coins, imitated or at least adapted, mostly coin-like coins. But in the middle of the 13th century, so in the time we are now, Osnabrückian types have also been imitated. For example, here in the final phase of the reign of the Kölner Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden. By the way, since 1224, half of Köln was owned by Herford. That is why the Kölner Archbishop also shaped it there. And that was a coin, like the Osnabrückian bishop Baldivin of Russel, 1259 to 1264. If you compare the coins, you can clearly see, on the back is the six-spoke Osnabrück wheel replaced by a cross. And the inscription also clearly reads Herfor. You can read OR below, Herfordia. Subsequently, Archbishop Siegfried of Westerburg. From 1257 on, Münster came back as a role model. Here you have the first type of bishop, Eberhard von Diest, from the 1270s or early 1280s imitated. Yes, my suggestion would be now, with the following addition, obviously after the role model of a Wiedenbrück phoenix, of Bishop Wittekind of Waldeck, so the bishop in Osnabrück, was designed, to place this coin in Herford as well. If you compare it, on the front and back even the smallest details are copied. But here, too, the six-spoke Osnabrück wheel in the building on the back is replaced by a cross, which is of course designed differently, with thickenings in the cross bars and each point in the cross angles. In my opinion, the piece fills very well the Herford imitation series between the archbishops Conrad and Siegfried, in the time of Engelbert II of Valkenburg, 1261 to 1274. And in the back cover, it also seems to start with an H. Unfortunately, you can't read more. Yes, and Herford, as a coin, would also fit quite well on the find there in Oelde. So it is located northwest, would be located northeast, so it would not surprise in any way here in the find. Yes, if you look at the find horizon in the southeastern Münsterland in the second half of the 13th century, the find complex from Oelde is unique so far and thus opens up detailed insights into the coin circulation in this room at this time. There are also only relatively comparable finds even in other regions of Westphalia at this time. Apart from poorly documented news about finds that are no longer accessible in the original. Only three are known at all. These finds are also located in other regions of Westphalia, and in this respect, the content of these finds is not at all comparable to that here from Oelde. Yes, there is no treasure from the eastern Münsterland at all. From the 13th century, only in the early 14th and then again in the early 15th century, there are two complexes. From Oelde itself you have news of a coin find from the middle of the 14th century, but it was discovered in the 19th century and nothing has been found of it at all. And the content is also very, very difficult to reconstruct on the basis of the written sources. Yes, the last thing that is interesting is that due to the location of the treasure find, with a certain probability, a specific farm in Oelde can be assigned to the Menninghausen farm. In Oelde, as everywhere else in the places, there were different landowners' properties and rights. And in the Menninghausen farm there was the monastery of Marienfelde, the house of Geist, the house of Möhler, the monastery of Herzebrock, the monastery of Klarholz, the Stift Essen and a few other small parties. If you go into the history of the farm, it may have belonged to the house of Möhler, a knight's property that was already inherited in the 11th century, which was then occupied by the Counts of Riedberg in the middle of the 13th century as a ministry. The history of the farm can unfortunately only be traced back to the early 16th century, i.e. in the time of the treasure find. We will not get to the later 13th century with this, but there are indications that in the 13th and 14th centuries it may have belonged to the monasteries of Herzebrock or Klarholz and only then moved to the house of Möhler in the 15th century. Basically, the find allows for a rare direct insight into the local conditions of the use of coin money, namely here in the environment directly of a farm, i.e. in the primary domain. But further research is necessary here. It is especially planned to carry out magnet prospections on site and in place, maybe even a real excavation, but that should have been it for today. As I said, Mr. Metzger from Oelde will certainly find more interesting coins on the site. And that's why I left the find site, the farm, anonymous today. Thank you very much.