With this volume, the Deutsche Bundesbank continues a series of publications of coins and banknotes from the collection of its Geldmuseum. This book dealing with the medieval period is the second in a series of three on gold coinage, following on from the one on ancient gold coins published in 1980, and covering the period from the ninth to the beginning of the sixteenth century.
While the starting point is set naturally by the continuation from the previous volume, the end is based on developments in Germany. These are characterised by the superseding of the Rhenish Gulden by a large silver coin (the Taler); also by the gradual dissolution of the coinage unions typical of the late Middle Ages, above all the Rhenish Union after 1515, and the emergence of new principles of organisation. For the Byzantine and Islamic areas the chronological limit is the conquest of the individual countries by the Ottoman Turks.