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Scharfrichterpfennig

award

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 27, 2025
Entity authorityQ2231291 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Scharfrichterpfennig ("Executioner's Penny") was a silver medal weighing a double thaler, which the incumbent executioner presented to the oldest judge of the city of Hamburg when he retired from the court. For the period between 1540 and 1810, a Scharfrichterpfennig was minted and presented annually. Some of the surviving specimens are in the Museum of Hamburg History.

Literature

Buchenau, Heinrich (1918). 'Unbekannter Scharfrichterpfennig. In: Blätter für Münzfreunde, Vol. 53, p. 480, ISSN 0935-7165

Dimpfel, Arthur (1904). "Ein Hamburger "Scharfrichterpfennig". In: Der deutsche Herold, Vol.

Editorial summary

“Scharfrichterpfennig” enters the record as award. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Scharfrichterpfennig and award can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1540, 1810, 1918, 1904—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Scharfrichterpfennig and award.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Scharfrichterpfennig” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Scharfrichterpfennig and award provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2231291. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1540, 1810, 1918 and 1904.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Scharfrichterpfennig”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Scharfrichterpfennig primary sources, Scharfrichterpfennig archive and Scharfrichterpfennig research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Scharfrichterpfennig”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Scharfrichterpfennig” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.