Pour le Mérite !

Excuse my french 😄

The title will make sense soon enough, keep readin!

So, got another German silver beauty for you today

As you know I love taking a guess first before doing any research on a coin... This time I think we have a captain or some short of explorer?

Let's see...

According to Numista we have Alexander von Humboldt with the medal of the "Order Pour Le Merité". Yeah... I am familiar with neither of those, lol!

But it seems my guess was correct as Mr. Humboldt was indeed an explorer amongst other things!

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography, while his advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement pioneered modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring source

He is probably best known for his concept of nature as a unified and interconnected system, which he articulated in his work "Kosmos, which over the course of time inspired a generation of scientists, writers, and thinkers, shaping the way we understand and appreciate the natural world.

Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler (1843), Public Domain

As for the the medal of the "Order Pour Le Mérite", it's a prestigious honor awarded for exceptional achievements in the arts, sciences, or military endeavors. Informally known as the "Blue Max", it was established in 1740 by King Frederick II of Prussia.

The medal is a blue enameled Maltese cross with gold eagles between the arms of the cross:

source

Fancy :)

Btw, this is not just an award. It's a ticket to an order of merit, one of the highest in the Kingdom of Prussia back in the days:

The Pour le Mérite was awarded as both a military and civil honour and ranked, along with the Order of the Black Eagle, the Order of the Red Eagle and the House Order of Hohenzollern, among the highest orders of merit in the Kingdom of Prussia. source

As you have probably guessed now, Alexander von Humboldt was awarded one in 1842 for his outstanding contributions and ground breaking discoveries I science and exploration. Yeah, he was kind of a big deal 😂

Ok, I think I covered the historic basics on this side. Feel free to google or visit the links above if you'd like to learn more about Alexander or the order!

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Flipping the coin reveals...

Yep an imperial chicken! Nothing new here, as always a unique eagle design. One less to catch!

Other than that, we have the denomination, minting date etc etc

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And finally the edge:

It reads

GEMEINSCHAFT VON GELEHRTEN UND KÜNSTLERN

For

Communion of scholars and artists

A clear reference to the order of the Pour le Mérite we talked about before!

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And now let's talk silver! We have the typical German recipe for commemorative coins of that era. 15.5 g of 0.625 purity, which amounts to 9.7 g of pure silver!

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Ok plebs, this is it for today. Hope you enjoyed yet another piece from my collection!

Closing I want to say that I really dig this coin! I really loved the design from the start but thanks to the coin I came to learn a lot of new cool stuff. One of my favs for sure!

And I bet it's one @kerrislravenhill loves yet still doesn't own. Ha! Take that pleb.

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Re-blog Lottery
Looks like cheap hive is back on the menu which means it's a good time for me to start accumulating HBI again!

Feel free to re-blog this post for a chance to win some for free.

I will be drawing tomorrow 5 hbi, one winner takes all. As always, I will be doing the drawing with the help of Precious on the silvergoldstackers discord.

Good luck frens!

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