1799, Austria/Prussia/Russia. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. Top! NGC MS63

1799, Austria/Prussia/Russia. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. Top! NGC MS63
1799, Austria/Prussia/Russia. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. Top! NGC MS63
1799, Austria/Prussia/Russia. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. Top! NGC MS63

1799, Austria/Prussia/Russia. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. Top! NGC MS63

Silver "Turn of the Century" Medal. Mint Year: 1799 Medallists: F. Reference: Diakov 250.1, Montenuovo 2323. Certified and graded by NGC as MS-63 - None in a higher or equal grade at NGC! Turn of the Century and the three great powers of the 18th Century: Prussia, Russia & Austria.

Diameter: 38mm Material: Silver Weight: 13gm. Winged and nude genius igniting a torch from fire on an altar, which is decorated with a bearded and winged facing face within endless snake (symbol for eternity). Legend: SEI DES AUFLEBENDEN JAHRHUNDERTS , Exergue: ALLWALTENDER SCHUTZGEIST D. Be the guardian spirit of the rising century. Three oval portraits of Frederick II of Prussia (right), Empress Catherine "the Great" of Russia (left) and Emperor Joseph II (above).

Medallist´s signature (Guillemard) below Joseph II's bust. Legend: DOCH STIRBT AUCH NIE DAS SECULUM WO JOSEPH CATHARINA FRIEDRICH GLAENZTEN Translated.

But the century will never be forgotten, where Joseph, Catharina and Frederick were shining. Joseph Benedikt Anton Michael Adam (March 13, 1741 February 20, 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I. Joseph was a proponent of enlightened absolutism.

Some of these reforms faced a vehement opposition by peasants and lords in several kingdoms and largely failed e. In Hungary but he gained immense popularity in other, more developed kingdoms, especially Bohemia where the name "Josef" became the most popular male first name. The death of Maria Theresa on November 29, 1780, left Joseph free. He immediately directed his government on a new course. He proceeded to attempt to realize his ideal of enlightened despotism acting on a definite system for the good of all.

The measures of emancipation of the peasantry which his mother had begun were carried on by him with feverish activity. The spread of education, the secularization of church lands, the reduction of the religious orders and the clergy in general to complete submission to the lay state, the issue of the Patent of Tolerance (1781) providing limited guarantee of freedom of worship, the promotion of unity by the compulsory use of the German languageeverything which from the point of view of 18th century philosophy, the Age of Enlightenment, appeared "reasonable"were undertaken at once.

He strove for administrative unity with characteristic haste to reach results without preparation. In addition, Joseph abolished serfdom in 1781. Later, in 1789, he decreed that peasants must be paid in cash payments rather than labor obligations. Also he abolished the death penalty in 1787 and it remained until 1795.

(3 August 1770 7 June 1840) was king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel (17971806 and again 18131840). The son of King Frederick William II of Prussia and Frederica Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, Frederick William was born in Potsdam and became Crown Prince in 1786, when his father ascended the throne.

As a child, Frederick William's father (under the influence of his mistress, Wilhelmine Enke, Countess of Lichtenau) had Frederick William handed over to tutors, as was quite normal for the period. He spent part of the time living at Paretz, the estate of the old soldier Count Hans von Blumenthal who was the governor of his brother Prince Heinrich. They thus grew up partly with the Count's son, who accompanied them on their Grand Tour in the 1780s. Frederick William was happy at Paretz, and for this reason in 1795 he bought it from his boyhood friend and turned it into an important royal country retreat. He was a melancholy boy, but he grew up pious and honest. His tutors included the dramatist Johan Engel.

On 24 December 1793, Frederick William married his second cousin Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a princess noted for her beauty. He succeeded the throne on 16 November 1797 and at once gave earnest of his good intentions by cutting down the expenses of the royal establishment, dismissing his father's ministers, and reforming the most oppressive abuses of the late reign. Unfortunately, however, he had all the Hohenzollern tenacity of personal power without the Hohenzollern genius for using it. Too distrustful to delegate his responsibility to his ministers, he was too infirm of will to strike out and follow a consistent course for himself.

At first he and his advisors attempted to pursue a policy of neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars. Although they succeeded in keeping out of the Third Coalition in 1805, eventually Frederick William was swayed by the belligerent attitude of the queen, who led Prussia's pro-war party, and entered into war in October 1806. On 14 October 1806, at the Battle of Jena-Auerstädt, the French defeated the Prussian army led by Frederick William, and the Prussian army collapsed. The royal family fled to Memel, East Prussia, where they fell on the mercy of Emperor Alexander I of Russia (who, rumour has it, had fallen in love with Queen Louise). Alexander, too, suffered defeat at the hands of the French, and at Tilsit on the Niemen France made peace with Russia and Prussia.

Napoleon dealt with Prussia very harshly, despite the pregnant Queen's personal interview with the French emperor. Prussia lost many of its Polish territories, as well as all territory west of the Elbe, and had to finance a large indemnity and to pay for French troops to occupy key strong points within the Kingdom. Although the ineffectual King himself seemed resigned to Prussia's fate, various reforming ministers, such as Baron vom Stein, Prince von Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, and Count Gneisenau, set about reforming Prussia's administration and military, with the encouragement of the Queen (who died, greatly mourned, in 1810). In 1813, following Napoleon's defeat in Russia, Frederick William turned against France and signed an alliance with Russia at Kalisz, although he had to flee Berlin, still under French occupation.

Prussian troops played a key part in the victories of the allies in 1813 and 1814, and the King himself travelled with the main army of Prince Schwarzenberg, along with Alexander of Russia and Francis of Austria. At the Congress of Vienna, Frederick William's ministers succeeded in securing important territorial increases for Prussia, although they failed to obtain the annexation of all of Saxony, as they had wished.

Following the war, Frederick William turned towards political reaction, abandoning the promises he had made in 1813 to supply Prussia with a constitution. He died on 7 June 1840.

His eldest son, Frederick William IV, succeeded him. Catherine II , called Catherine the Great. 21 April 1729 17 November O. 6 November 1796 reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years, from 9 July O. 28 June 1762 until her death.

Catherine's father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as Governor of the city of Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland) in the name of the king of Prussia. Though born as Sophia Augusta Frederica (Sophia Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, nicknamed "Figchen"), a minor German princess in Stettin, Catherine did have some (very remote) Russian ancestry, and two of her first cousins became Kings of Sweden: Gustav III and Charles XIII.

In accordance with the custom then prevailing amongst the German nobility, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. The choice of Sophia as wife of the prospective tsar Peter of Holstein-Gottorp resulted from some amount of diplomatic management in which Count Lestocq and Frederick II of Prussia took an active part. Lestocq and Frederick wanted to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia in order to weaken the influence of Austria and ruin the chancellor Bestuzhev, on whom Tsarina Elizabeth relied, and who acted as a known partisan of Russo-Austrian co-operation. The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Sophie's mother, Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, a clever and ambitious woman.

Historical accounts portray Catherine's mother as emotionally cold and physically abusive, as well as a social climber who loved gossip and court intrigues. Johanna's hunger for fame centered on her daughter's prospects of becoming empress of Russia, but she infuriated Empress Elizabeth, who eventually banned her from the country for spying for King Frederick of Prussia (reigned 17401786).

Nonetheless, Elizabeth took a strong liking to the daughter, and the marriage finally took place in 1745. The empress knew the family well because she had intended to marry Princess Johanna's brother Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein), who had died of smallpox in 1727 before the wedding could take place. Princess Sophia spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with the Empress Elizabeth, but with her husband and with the Russian people. She applied herself to learning the Russian language with such zeal that she rose at night and walked about her bedroom barefoot repeating her lessons(though she mastered the language , she still had her accent).

This resulted in a severe attack of pneumonia in March 1744. When she wrote her memoirs she represented herself as having made up her mind when she came to Russia to do whatever seemed necessary, and to profess to believe whatever required of her, in order to become qualified to wear the crown. The consistency of her character throughout life makes it highly probable that even at the age of fifteen she possessed sufficient maturity to adopt this worldly-wise line of conduct. Her father, a very devout Lutheran, strongly opposed his daughter's conversion. Despite his instructions, on June 28, 1744 the Russian Orthodox Church received her as a member with the name Catherine.

And the (artificial) patronymic (Alekseyevna). On the following day the formal betrothal took place, and Catherine married the Grand Duke Peter on August 21, 1745 at Saint Petersburg.

The newlyweds settled in the palace of Oranienbaum, which would remain the residence of the "young court" for 56 years. The unlikely marriage proved unsuccessful due to the Grand Duke Peter's impotence and immaturity, he may not have consummated it for 12 years. While Peter took a mistress (Elizabeth Vorontsova), Catherine carried on liaisons with Sergei Saltykov, Charles Hanbury Williams and Stanislaw August Poniatowski.

She became friends with Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's mistress, who introduced her to several powerful political groups that opposed her husband. Catherine read widely and kept up-to-date on current events in Russia and in the rest of Europe. She corresponded with many of the prominent minds of her era, including Voltaire and Diderot. After the death of the Empress Elizabeth on 5 January 1762 O. 25 December 1761, Peter succeeded to the throne as Peter III of Russia and moved into the new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg; Catherine thus became Empress Consort of Russia. However, the new tsar's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king, Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. Compounding matters, Peter intervened in a dispute between Holstein and Denmark over the province of Schleswig (see Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff).

Peter's insistence on supporting his native Holstein in an unpopular war eroded much of his support among the nobility. In July 1762, Peter committed the political error of retiring with his Holstein-born courtiers and relatives to Oranienbaum, leaving his wife in Saint Petersburg. On July 13 and July 14 the Leib Guard revolted, deposed Peter, and proclaimed Catherine the ruler of Russia. The bloodless coup succeeded; Ekaterina Dashkova, a confidante of Catherine, remarked that Peter seemed rather glad to have rid himself of the throne, and requested only a quiet estate and his mistress.

Six months after his accession to the throne and three days after his deposition, on July 17, 1762, Peter III died at Ropsha at the hands of Alexei Orlov (younger brother to Gregory Orlov, then a court favorite and a participant in the coup). Soviet-era historians assumed that Catherine had ordered the murder, as she also disposed of other potential claimants to the throne (Ivan VI and Princess Tarakanova) at about the same time, but many modern historians believe that she had no part in it. Catherine, although not descended from any previous Russian emperor, succeeded her husband, following the precedent established when Catherine I succeeded Peter I in 1725. Her accession-manifesto justified her succession by citing the "unanimous election" of the nation.

However a great part of nobility regarded her reign as a usurpation, tolerable only during the minority of her son, Grand Duke Paul. In the 1790s a group of nobles connected with Paul (Nikita Panin and others) contemplated the possibility of a new coup to depose Catherine and transfer the crown to Paul, whose power they envisaged restricting in a kind of constitutional monarchy.

However, nothing came of this, and Catherine reigned until her death. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. NGC MS63" is in sale since Thursday, October 21, 2021.

This item is in the category "Coins & Paper Money\Coins\ World\Europe\Austria". The seller is "coinworldtv" and is located in Wien.

This item can be shipped worldwide.
1799, Austria/Prussia/Russia. Silver Turn of the Century Medal. Top! NGC MS63


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