Gulden

The gulden (German and Dutch for "golden") was the name given in the German-speaking lands and the Low Countries to gold coins of the florin type, and later to silver coins and units of account descended from them. The name, often written "fl." for florin, stayed in use for some six centuries, from the gold coins of the fourteenth century to the Dutch guilder, which was replaced by the euro in 2002.

There was never a single gulden. Many princes, cities and monetary unions issued their own, and the coin's gold content, and later its silver content, varied widely between issuers and over time.

The model was the Florentine florin, first struck in 1252. From the early fourteenth century rulers north of the Alps began issuing their own gold florins, often copying the Florentine lily and figure of Saint John the Baptist. Hungary struck gold of the florin type from the 1320s, and in the 1340s the city of Lübeck, home of the Lübeck mark, received imperial permission to strike gold gulden.

The most important issue was the Rhenish gulden (Rheinischer Gulden), struck by the four Rhine electors, the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne and the Count Palatine, who agreed common standards from the mid-fourteenth century and formalised them in a monetary union in 1386. The Rhenish gulden became the main gold coin of the Holy Roman Empire and was widely used to state prices and debts. Its gold content was reduced several times, so that by the fifteenth century it contained noticeably less gold than the florin or the Venetian ducat, a typical case of gradual debasement.

Because gold coins were too valuable for most payments, the gulden also served as a unit of account reckoned in smaller silver money. In the late fifteenth century, new silver mines made it possible to strike a large silver coin worth one gold gulden. The first, the Guldengroschen, was issued in Tyrol in 1486. This coin led directly to the thaler, which became the standard large silver coin of central Europe.

Over the following centuries the gulden itself became mainly a silver denomination. In southern Germany and the Habsburg lands it was divided into 60 kreuzer, and agreements such as the Convention standard of 1753 set its silver content for Austria, Bavaria and other states.

The south German states used the gulden until the new German Empire introduced the gold mark in the 1870s, the forerunner of later German currencies such as the Deutsche Mark. The Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) gulden, also called the florin or forint, lasted until a currency reform in 1892 moved the empire onto the gold standard with a new krone.

In the Netherlands the gulden or guilder became the national currency. It was put on a decimal basis of 100 cents in the nineteenth century and remained in use until the introduction of the euro. The Dutch name survives in the Netherlands Antillean guilder, and the florin name in the Aruban florin.

Several other currency names share the same root or history. The Hungarian forint takes its name from the florin, and the Polish złoty also means "golden", a name first applied to foreign gold coins circulating in medieval Poland. The abbreviation "fl." and the symbol "ƒ", long used for Dutch and Austrian money, are both reminders of the coin's Florentine origin.

• British Museum – Collection online
• American Numismatic Society