As well as being the name of a coin, the Schilling was an historical unit in three areas of measurement: numbers, volume and weight. It can be regarded as a European measure, because it was used in

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; ; ) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. In a narrow, geographic sense, it roughly encompasses the territories of present-day Czechia that fall within the Elbe River's drainage basin, but historic ...

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

Silesia Silesia (see names #Etymology, below) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Silesia, Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at 8, ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

and

Lusatia Lusatia (; ; ; ; ; ), otherwise known as Sorbia, is a region in Central Europe, formerly entirely in Germany and today territorially split between Germany and modern-day Poland. Lusatia stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the eas ...

. In Bohemian mines it was a measure of volume that corresponded to 5 wheelbarrows. The ''schilling'' was determined as follows: * 1 ''schilling'' = 12 leather skins filled with water = 480 Prague

pint The pint (, ; symbol pt, sometimes abbreviated as ''p'') is a unit of volume or capacity in both the imperial and United States customary measurement systems. In both of those systems, it is one-eighth of a gallon. The British imperial pint ...

s * 18 ''schillings'' = 1 quantity (''Losung'') of water In

Regensburg Regensburg (historically known in English as Ratisbon) is a city in eastern Bavaria, at the confluence of the rivers Danube, Naab and Regen (river), Regen, Danube's northernmost point. It is the capital of the Upper Palatinate subregion of the ...

the measure was applied to

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

. In Bavaria, for example, it was used as a number and a weight. * 1 ''schilling'' salt = 40 'slices' (''Salzscheiben'') * 8 ''schillings'' = 1 ''Pfund'' ("pound") of salt In

a ''schilling'' corresponded to the number 30 and in

and

, the number 12. In the regional dialect it was called a ''Schilger'' in Silesia and a ''Schilger'' or ''Schilk'' in Lusatia. 240 ''pfennigs'' were minted from the 367 g

Carolingian pound The Carolingian pound (, ), also called Charlemagne's pound or the Charlemagne pound, was a unit of weight that emerged during the reign of Charlemagne. It served both as a trading weight and a coinage weight. It had a mass of about 408 g and was ...

of silver. A ''schilling'' was determined to be twelve ''pfennigs'', but was initially not an actual coin.Walter Haupt: ''Sächsische Münzkunde'', Berlin 1974, p. 12

Footnotes

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References

Literature

* Joachim Heinrich Campe: ''Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache.'' Volume 4, Brunswick: Schulbuchhandlung, 1810, p. 141 Obsolete units of measurement Units of amount Units of mass Units of volume Units of measurement of the Holy Roman Empire