THE COIN COLLECTOR - World eBook Library

CONTINENT OF EUROPE
wick frontier, particularly Gottingen, Goslar, Hildes-
heim, and East Friesland ; and the same may be said
when we approach the North, and take in succession
Oldenburg, which possesses curious early dated pieces
Holstein, with its three branches ; the Hanse towns,
particularly Li'ibeck and Hamburg, the latter once the
seat of the great Von Hovel family, whose castle may be
seen on its coins ; Mecklenburg, permanently associated
in its undivided state with the illustrious Wallenstein,
and now forming two duchies, Mecklenburg-Schwerin
and Mecklenburg-Strelitz ; and finally Pommern or
Pomerania, with a group of towns on the Baltic coast
—Wismar, Rostock, Wolgast—round which a religious
curiosity has gathered, as the seats in old times of a
nature-worship symbolised on their money, and common
to many other places.
Brandenburg is a name borne by a margraviat and
electorate, as well as by a margraviat in Franconia,
and by the branches of Anspach and Bayreuth. With
the three last are connected series of coins dating back
to an early period, and in all metals. The electorate
was the germ of the modern kingdom of Prussia through
the acquisition of Brandenburg, in 1415, by Friedrich
von Hohenzollern, Burggraf of Nurnberg, by purchase
from the Emperor Sigismund. Long prior to the ex-
istence of Prussia as a kingdom, it was in a contracted
sense a duchy subject to Poland ; the Dukes of Massow,
whose capital was Warsaw, and of whose money, struck at
Culm, in Western Prussia, we have no direct knowledge,
and later on the Teutonic knights, who have left
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