by Jenna K.
When I was a young child I always loved coins - shiny objects, play money for my pretend kingdom. Perhaps in the memories of my childhood, playing in a make-believe world of fairy tale kings and princess that only I could see, one might discover the root of my appreciation for coins.
One then needs to skip years—well over a decade—and imagine a fall history course; the sort almost every college freshman takes, a Western history survey course. And the page opened to a grainy photograph of a woman in a white dress with a large hat, a man beside her, with a sword, walking down steps to car—and the text explained how the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne in Sarajevo in 1914 lead to the First World War.
And I was fascinated—I left that class wondering about that couple. Were they happy? Was it one of the unhappy arranged marriages where one (or both) spouses would have been more than happy to do without the other? Would they have wanted to die together? And I discovered the love story of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg. I wanted to know everything about them—and began to collect things associated with them—books published about them, postcards commemorating their assassination in Sarajevo, medals, ribbons…and of course, I was led to the wonderful commemorative set by the Austrian mint: Tragedies in the House of Habsburg.
The first coin I ever purchased (from Euro Collections International) was a commemorative coin from the Austrian Mint (1999) of Franz Ferdinand. Later I purchased the one of Artstetten (2004), their burial site in North Austria, near the Danube. It was one of my dreams to visit their burial site at Schloss Artstetten—something I finally was able to do two summers ago. The stories of the other Habsburgs fascinate me also—the doomed Marie-Antoinette, Rudolf and Mayerling, the Blessed Karl, the last emperor of Austria. Coins of the era—a schilling here and there, from the time of the K. u. K. Monarchy have found their way into my collections. I imagine I am holding a piece of history—and wonder where that coin has been. The beautiful gold ducat with Franz Josef I continues to beckon.
My collections—not just of coins—revolve around my interest in the Habsburgs, the Great War (1914-1918), especially Franz Ferdinand! While I find most of these coins beautiful (and if I had time and money would love to own any and all of them), I collect specific coins—it is what is being commemorated that calls me. The significance of that moment, or how this invention, that person, this battle, contributed to and affected history, fascinates me. As I hold the coin of Schloss Artstetten in my hand, and look at the door of the crypt and the profile of the Archduke and Duchess, the weight of over a century of history is concentrated therein. For me, that is the beauty—it is a minute, concentrated piece—of history.