Monetary disorder before 1850

From the Helvetic franc to cantonal coinage

Switzerland had experienced a unified currency once before 1850. During the Helvetic Republic, the authorities introduced a decimal system in which one franc was divided into ten batzen of ten rappen (centimes) each, and coins were struck in Basel, Bern and Solothurn in denominations from one rappen to a gold piece of thirty-two francs.¹ The Helvetic franc was based on the Bernese monetary standard. From 1799 it was meant to unify the currency of the whole country, a project that failed for lack of precious metal.² A museum publication on the city’s money captures the Zurich perspective. The idea, it explains, was to create a common currency for the whole Helvetic Republic, but the resources for large-scale minting were lacking, while the French authorities who took control of the state treasury in 1798 ended Zurich’s independent monetary system.³

After the Act of Mediation of 1803 had returned the right of coinage to the cantons, twenty-two cantons were by 1815 in principle entitled to strike their own coins. The attempt of the Helvetic Republic survived as a reference point. On 17 April 1825 six western cantons, Aargau, Basel, Bern, Fribourg, Solothurn and Vaud, concluded a coinage concordat to harmonise their batzen and kreuzer coinage.⁴ Zurich and the eastern cantons remained outside this arrangement. Zurich reckoned traditionally in gulden of forty schillings, while the eastern cantons were oriented towards the monetary systems of southern Germany.⁵

The practical consequences

The result was a monetary landscape of extraordinary complexity. A popular account of the introduction of the franc notes that in 1849 Zurich was dominated by ducats and thalers, Schwyz reckoned in rappen and Chur in batzen.⁶ The Historical Lexicon counts some 312 different types of coin that were replaced by the reform of 1850 to 1852.⁷ The domestic coinages were supplemented, and in larger payments largely displaced, by foreign coins: French écus and five-franc pieces in the west, south German gulden and kreuzer in the east, the Brabant thaler (Kronentaler) in trade and banking, and gold ducats and doubloons for large transactions. The University Library of Basel, in its exhibition blog for the 175th anniversary of the franc, lists gulden, francs, batzen, doubloons and denari among the units in daily use, and notes that ordinary transactions often required complicated currency conversions.⁸

The Bank in Zürich, the city’s first note-issuing bank (section VII), illustrates the problem at the level of the banking system. Its early notes were denominated in Brabant thalers, the leading trade coin of the region. In 1841 the bank overstamped its notes so that they could be redeemed either in Brabant thalers or in French francs.⁹ A bank that had to promise redemption in two foreign coinages, because no domestic coinage was fit for the purpose, was a bank in a country without a currency of its own in any meaningful sense.

For economic actors, monetary fragmentation meant costs of three kinds. The first were transaction costs: every payment across a cantonal border required the valuation of the coins tendered, and money-changers took their margin. The second were costs of uncertainty: coins of the same name differed in weight and fineness according to the mint and the year, worn and clipped coins circulated alongside full-weight pieces, while the relative values of gold and silver fluctuated. The third were costs of accounting and law: debts, rents and mortgages were denominated in a variety of units, and every change in the relative value of coins raised questions about the discharge of obligations. The monetary disorder was thus also a problem of private law, whose solution required the conversion of existing obligations into a new unit.

For the merchant bankers of Zurich, Basel and Geneva, this confusion was a source of income as well as a burden. Exchange business, the arbitrage between coinages and the management of payments across borders were part of their traditional trade. It is no accident that the leading voices in the currency debate of 1849 and 1850 were bankers. They understood better than anyone the cost of the existing system and had clear interests in the choice of the new standard.

Notes

1. Wikipedia (de), “Schweizer Münzgeschichte”, section on the Helvetic Republic and the nineteenth century, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_M%C3%BCnzgeschichte. ↩
2. HLS, Bernard Degen, “Franken”, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D13671.php. Degen also notes that silver francs had been struck in Bern, Basel, Solothurn and Lucerne from 1757. ↩
3. MoneyMuseum Zürich, “Die Zürcher und ihr Geld”, companion volume to the exhibition, https://www.moneymuseum.com/pdf/archiv/Die%20Zuercher%20und%20ihr%20Geld.pdf. ↩
4. Wikipedia (de), “Schweizer Münzgeschichte”, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_M%C3%BCnzgeschichte. ↩
5. MoneyMuseum Zürich, “Die Zürcher und ihr Geld”, section on the Zurich monetary system before 1798, https://www.moneymuseum.com/pdf/archiv/Die%20Zuercher%20und%20ihr%20Geld.pdf. ↩
6. watson.ch, “Der erste Schweizer Franken”, https://www.watson.ch/wissen/wirtschaft/798655140-der-erste-schweizer-franken. ↩
7. HLS, Peter Püntener, “Notenbanken”, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D13746.php. ↩
8. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, blog, “Von Gold und Silber – 175 Jahre Schweizer Franken” (14 July 2025), https://blog.ub.unibas.ch/2025/07/14/von-gold-und-silber-175-jahre-schweizer-franken/. ↩
9. Jürg Richter and Ruedi Kunzmann, Die Banknoten der Schweiz (Regenstauf: Gietl Verlag), introductory chapters on the note-issuing banks, https://www.numis-online.ch/download/Richter-Die-Banknoten-der-Schweiz-opt.pdf. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.