“A Silver Legend: The Story of the Maria Theresa Thaler” by Clara Semple
For those of us who have rummaged through old silver jewellery in the souks of North Africa, the Sahara and Arabia - handling pieces that were once worn with elegance, warmth and a confident pride - this book is like delving into an album of shared passions. For these are the lands where the thaler of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, a silver coin weighing exactly an ounce, remained common currency for two hundred years. The book is well illustrated with maps, engravings of early travellers, their accounts of dealing with thalers and an enchanting collection of photographs of all sorts and conditions of silver jewellery being worn in the field but always with a unifying Maria Theresa thaler connection. Happily this even extends to the photograph on the back cover where subject and author are united in a gleaming necklace of well-worn thalers.
The story of the Maria Theresa thaler begins with a silver mining boom in the Bohemian valley of St Joachimsthal. The elegant one-ounce coins minted by the owner of this valley, Count Stephen von Schlick set a model of excellence. They were known by traders as thal or tal (the German for valley) which was corrupted into dalers by the Dutch and dollars by the English. The bohemian thalers would be overtaken in fame by the silver coins of the Hapsburg Empire, known as either the Spanish reale or pillar dollar. In its heyday of purity, it was traded around the world and shipped in vast quantities to the Far East. It was devalued in 1650 though yet remained one of the accepted basket of currencies for another 150 years.
Nothing about the rival monarchies of mid-18th century Europe would allow one to guess that they would incubate a coinage that would eclipse the pillar dollar. Indeed the constant wars and financial tribulations of all the old regime kingdoms made this a uniquely bad time for the purity of coins. Austria under the rule of Maria Theresa was by comparison a model of fiscal rectitude. Clara Semple goes close to suggesting that aside from the known purity of the Maria Theresa thaler, something of the spirit of this handsome woman would also become enduringly associated with the coin. Loyal to her disloyal husband, peacefully inclined when all her contemporary monarchs plotted war, hardworking, a loyal daughter to the Catholic Church, a proud and productive mother, the acknowledged mother-in-law of Europe, she was and remains a fine example. Her coins are indeed beautiful objects, for she is cast as both human and an august empress, the rim of her coins etched with the motto JUSTITA ET CLEMENTIAS while the heraldic imagery of the obverse: the triple crowns, the fierce double eagle and the complicated dynastic shield has its own distinctive appeal.
The worldwide spread of the thaler has however nothing to do with her understanding of finance: indeed for most of her reign, Maria Theresa imposed an official ban on the export of her fine Austrian thalers. It would come about through a cabal of bankers from Augsburg working with a Swiss financier, Count Johann Von Fries who was a welcome presence at the Austrian court. In response to a cash crisis that was inhibiting trade with the Ottoman Empire (including the purchase of coffee) the bankers proposed a solution. They would provide bullion so that the Austrian mint could create thalers that could be immediately dedicated to their needs. It proved to be a successful deal (some eight million thalers were sold into the Ottoman Empire at a useful profit) which they wished to repeat just a year after the old Empresses died. Her son, the Emperor Joseph gave his permission to use the old design providing they once again provided the bullion.
This remained the core principle around the two hundred year success of the Maria Theresa thaler. For the coin thereafter remained quite isolated from the conflicting demands of a royal treasurer or a state bank. It was the product of demand, paid for by foreign traders who required a respected unit of exchange. Its long term success is also of course a reflection on the unreliability of national banks though the thaler never achieved an absolute position but co-existed with the Ottoman mejidi, the Dutch lion dollar and the Spanish reale.
Mussolini was so jealous of the thaler’s success that he tried to suppress it in favour of the lira, a misguided action that allowed Antonin Besse (the Aden-based French financier who founded St Anthonys in Oxford) to make ‘not a business but a fortune falling from the skies’ by minting Maria Theresa thalers in Britain. It remained an official unit of currency in Oman until as late as 1970 and is still produced though in ever-diminishing quantities. Amongst silver jewellers its fame will never die; preserved through an affectionate litany of nicknames; riyal fransah, imperial dollar, abu taka (window), levantine thaler, abu riysh (feathers), abu Tair (bird), riyal kabir, grosse madame and in Ethiopia as the sett birr (woman dollar).
“Her coins are indeed beautiful objects, for she is cast as both human and an august empress ...”