On Temporariness

In 1892, the Habsburg dynasty introduced a new currency - the Crown. The Crown replaced the old Guldens and was firmly linked to gold. No one had any objec

What other symbol to place on the coin than the crown? It is the Hungarian St. Stephen's Crown and the Hungarian variant of the coin. The Habsburg monarchy was not officially called Austria-Hungary and the monarch ruled as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. The state rights of other countries were ignored.

This is a depiction of the monarch from 1892. He was 62 years old.

Surprisingly, the Austrian version of the coin depicts the crown only on a one-crown. On the five and two crowns we see the national emblem.

This is a depiction of the monarch from 1909. He was 79 years old then.

On the Austrian version you can read the descriptions in Latin and on the Hungarian version in Hungarian. Dimensions, weights and quality are the same.
5 Corona, diameter 36 mm, 24 g, purity of silver 900/1000.
2 Corona, diameter 27 mm, 10 g, purity of silver 835/1000
1 Corona, diameter 23 mm, 5 g, purity of silver 835/1000

Emperor Franz Joseph I died in 1916 at the age of 86. The Habsburg monarchy ended in 1918. It was replaced by several successor states. In the case of my present homeland, it was the Czechoslovak Republic.

The Republic, of course, rejected all the old monarchist traditions. Including the name of the currency. There were dozens of suggestions as to what the new currency should be called.

There were so many proposals that their proposers could not agree quickly. Therefore, they agreed that until they reached an agreement, our currency would temporarily be called the corona-koruna. So this temporariness lasts just 105 years.

In 1993, the crown symbol even returned to the Czech single crown.

1 koruna, diameter 20 mm, 3.6 g,nickel-plated steel

Is there a lesson to be learned from my article? Maybe all traditions are just the result of laziness to do something better or inability to agree.

Certainly, temporary solutions tend to be very long-term. In our country, we say that the unit of measurement of temporariness is one eternity. But that doesn't sound so nice in English.