Definition

• A small base silver coin struck in various Cantons of Switzerland, but specially in Luzerne, Schwyz, Appenzell, Zug, Zurich, Schaffhausen, and St. Gallen. They are mentioned as early as 1424, and in a Munzbuch, printed at Nuremburg by Georg Wachter in 1530, the value of the Angster is stated to be one-fourth of the Kreuzer. They occur in the coinage as late as the middle of the nineteenth cen- tury, and retained this value.

  The etymology of the name is dubious. Du Cange (i) states that it is a corrup- tion of Angesicht , i.e., face or visage. An- other authority derives the name from an individual named Angst, the master of a mint in Switzerland.

Source

• Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)

Relationships