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GERMAN

(100) HUNDERT MARK

1910

#P-42

LARGE BLANKET NOTE

Beautifully engraved banknote from Imperial Germany issued in 1910. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignettes of allegorical symbols, including NAVAL BATTLESHIPS, AN ANVIL, THE MEDICAL SYMBOL CADUCEUS, GREEK MYTHOLOGICAL MERCURY & CHLORIS THE NYMPH. THE KING IN HIS REGALIA, GUARDS THE TOOLS AND TRADE. This item has the printed signatures of various German officials and is over 96 years old.

LARGE HERALDIC EAGLE

SERIAL NUMBER B - 7862355

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GERMAN WEIMAR REPUBLIC

#P-180

(4 NOTES) 10 MARK

1929 ISSUE

REICHSBANKDIREKTORIUM

3 CONSECUTIVE BILLS

G-01909708 TO G-01909710

G-01909713

CIRCULATED WITH MINIMAL WEAR

FACE DEPICTS RENOWNED SCIENTIST

ALBRECHT THAER - AGRONOMIST

OBVERSE DEPICTS TWO CHERUB HOLDING FISH AND PRODUCE. ALSO A YOUNG LADY HOLDS A SICKLE AND WHEAT

TO SYMBOLIZE THE FUTURE HARVEST.

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Papiergeld Banknoten 12 Zwanzig Mark 20 Mark 19 Februar 1914 Reichsbanknote der Reichsbankhauptkasse Berlin.
Ein Zwanzig-Mark-Schein aus der Kaiserzeit.

Paper money bill 12/20 Mark 20 Mark 19 February 1914 Reichsbanknote the Reichsbank Hauptkasse Berlin
A twenty-mark note from the imperial period.

ORNATE BILL

SERIAL NUMBER J-3243349

CIRCULATED WITH WEAR

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FYI

Reich is a German word cognate with the English word rich with the same meaning as an adjective, but more importantly its homonym as a noun, Reich, is usually used in German to designate a kingdom or an empire and also the Roman Empire. The terms Kaisertum and Kaiserreich are used in German to more specifically define an empire led by an emperor. To some extent Reich is comparable in meaning and development to the English word realm (via French reaume "kingdom" from Latin regalis "royal").

In English Reich is sometimes used as a loan word, which denotes a historical national state of Germany.

In the case of the German Empire (1871-1918), the official name was Deutsches Reich, is literally translated as "German Realm", because formally the official position of its head of state, in the Constitution of the German Empire, was a "presidency" of a confederation of German states led by the King of Prussia. He assumed the title of "German Emperor" (Deutscher Kaiser), which rather referred to the German nation than directly to the "country" of Germany.

The Latin etymological counterpart of Reich is not imperium, but rather regnum. Both terms translate to "rule, sovereignty, government", usually of monarchs (kings or emperors), but also of gods, and of the Christian God. The German version of the Lord's Prayer uses the words Dein Reich komme for "?????? ? ???????? ???" (usually translated as "thy kingdom come" in English) Himmelreich is the German term for the concept of "kingdom of heaven".

Except for its Latin cognate regnum (kingdom) it is cognate with Scandinavian rike/rige, Dutch: rijk, Sanskrit: raj and English: -ric, as found in bishopric.

Etymology

The German noun Reich is derived from Old High German rihhi, which together with its cognates in Old English rice Old Norse rîki and Gothic reiki is from a Common Germanic *rikijan. The English noun is extinct, but persists in composition, in bishop-ric. The German adjective reich, on the other hand, has an exact cognate in English rich. Both the noun (*rikijan) and the adjective (*rikijaz) are derivations based on a Common Germanic *riks "ruler, king", reflected in Gothic as reiks, glossing ????? "leader, ruler, chieftain".

It is probable that the Germanic word was not inherited from pre-Proto-Germanic, but rather loaned from Celtic (i.e. Gaulish rix) at an early time.

The word has many cognates outside of Germanic and Celtic, notably Latin rex and Sanskrit raja "king". It is ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root *reg-, meaning "to straighten out" or "rule".

Holy Roman Empire

The term Reich was part of the German names for Germany for much of its history. Reich was used by  itself in the common German variant of the Holy Roman Empire, (Heiliges Römisches Reich (HRR)). Der rîche was a title for the Emperor. However, Latin, not German, was the formal legal language of the medieval Empire (Imperium Romanum Sacrum), so English-speaking historians are more likely to use Latin imperium than German Reich as a term for this period of German history. The common contemporary Latin legal term used in documents of the Holy Roman Empire was for a long time regnum ("rule, domain, empire", such as in Regnum Francorum for the Frankish Kingdom) before imperium was in fact adopted, the latter first attested in 1157, whereas the parallel use of regnum never fell out of use during the Middle Ages.

Modern Age

At the beginning of the Modern age, some circles redubbed the HRR into the "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" (Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation), a symptom of the formation of a German Nation state as opposed to the Multinational state the HRR was throughout its history. Austria-Hungary and Prussia opposed this movement.

Resistance against the French revolution with its concept of the state brought a new movement to create a German "ethnical state", especially after the Napoleonic wars. Ideal for this state was the HRR; the legend arose that Germany were "un-defeated when unified", especially after the Franco-Prussian War (Deutsch-Französischer Krieg, lit. "German-French war"). Before that, the German question ruptured this "German unity" after the '48 Revolution before it was achieved, however; Austria-Hungary as a multinational state could not become part of the new "German empire", and nationality conflicts in Prussia with the Prussian Poles arose ("We can never be Germans - Prussians, every time!").

The advent of national feeling and the movement to create an ethnically German Empire did lead directly to nationalism in 1871. Ethnic minorities declined since the beginning of the Modern Age, like the Polabs, Sorbs and even the once important Low Germans had to assimilate themselves. This marked the transition between Antijudaism, where converted Jews were accepted as full citizens (in theory), to Antisemitism, where Jews were thought to be from a different ethnicity that could never become German. Apart from all those ethnic minorities being de-facto extinct, even today the era of national feeling is taught in history in German schools as an important stepping-stone on the road to a German nation.

German Reich

The unified Germany which arose under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1871 was the first entity that was officially called in German Deutsches Reich, also the Second Reich (Zweites Reich) succeeding the HRR. Deutsches Reich remained the official name of Germany until 1945, although these years saw three very different political systems more commonly referred to in English as: "the German Empire" (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933; this term is a pre-World War II coinage not used at the time), and Nazi Germany (the Third Reich) (1933–1945).

During the Weimar Republic

After 1918 "Reich" was usually not translated as "Empire" in English-speaking countries, and the title was instead simply used in its original German. During the Weimar Republic the term "Reich" and the prefix "Reichs-" referred not to the idea of empire but rather to the institutions, officials, affairs etc. of the whole country as opposed to those of one of its constituent federal states (Länder). Das Reich meant the legal persona of the (federal) State, similar to The Crown designating the State (and its treasury) in Commonwealth countries, and The Union in the United States of America.

During the Nazi period

The Nazis sought to legitimize their power historiographically by portraying their ascendancy to rule as the direct continuation of an ancient German past. They adopted the term das Dritte Reich ("the Third Empire" – usually rendered in English in the partial-translation "the Third Reich"), first used in a 1923 novel by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, that counted the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire as the first and the 1871-1918 monarchy as the second, which was then to be followed by a "reinvigorated" third one. This ignored the previous 1918-1933 Weimar period, which the Nazis denounced as a historical aberration, contemptuously referring to it as "the System". In the summer of 1939 the Nazis themselves actually banned the continued use of the term in the press, ordering it to use expressions such as nationalsozialistisches Deutschland ("National Socialist Germany"), Grossdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich"), or simply Deutsches Reich (German Reich) to refer to the German state instead. It was Adolf Hitler's personal desire that grossdeutsches reich and nationalsozialistischer staat ("[the] National Socialist State") would be used in place of Drittes Reich. Reichskanzlei Berchtesgaden ("Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden"), another nickname of the regime (named after the eponymous town located in the vicinity of Hitler's mountain residence where he spent much of his time in office) was also banned at the same time, despite the fact that a sub-section of the Chancellery was in fact installed there to serve Hitler's needs.

Although the term "Third Reich" is still in common use to refer to this historical period, the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich" for the earlier periods are seldom found outside Nazi propaganda. To use the terms "First Reich" and "Second Reich", as some commentators did in the post-war years, is generally frowned upon as accepting Nazi historiography. During and following the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in 1938 Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer ("One people, one Reich, one leader"), in order to enforce pan-German sentiment. The term Altes Reich ("old Reich"; cf. French ancien regime for monarchical France) is sometimes used to refer to the Holy Roman Empire. The term Altreich was also used after the Anschluss to denote Germany with its pre-1938 post-WWI borders. Another name that was popular during this period was the term Tausendjähriges Reich ("Thousand-Year Reich"), the millennial connotations of which suggested that Nazi Germany would last for a thousand years to come; in reality it was ousted after a mere 12 years.

The Nazis also spoke of enlarging the then-established Greater German Reich into a "Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation" (Grossgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation) by gradually annexing all the historically Germanic countries and regions of Europe (Flanders, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.) directly into the Nazi state.

Possible negative connotations in modern use

A number of previously neutral words used by the Nazis have later taken on negative connotations in German (e.g. Führer or Heil); while in many contexts Reich is not one of them (Frankreich, France; Römisches Reich, Roman Empire), it can imply German imperialism or strong nationalism if it is used to describe a political or governmental entity. Reich has thus not been used in official terminology since 1945, though it is still found in the name of the Reichstag building, which since 1999 has housed the German federal parliament, the Bundestag. The decision not to rename the Reichstag building was taken only after long debate in the Bundestag; even then, it is described officially as Reichstag - Sitz des Bundestages (Reichstag, seat of the Bundestag). As seen in this example, the term "Bund" (federation) has replaced "Reich" in the names of various state institutions such as the army ("Bundeswehr"). The term "Reichstag" also remains in use in the German language as the term for the parliaments of some foreign monarchies, such as Sweden's Riksdag and Japan's pre-war Imperial Diet.