album · page xi · silvertaler (free city post)
five pfennig · issued 1881 · printed by the free city press, silvertaler-am-see
silvertaler was a free city for two hundred and twelve years, governed by a council of seven and a customs roll three feet long. its arms were the crossed keys — supposed to be the keys of the silver-mine and the grain-store, though some said the keys of heaven and the keys of forgetting, depending on which councillor you asked.
the five-pfennig green was the workhorse: city letters, receipts, the modest small folded notes between the council and its clerks. it was printed on paper made at the city's own mill, which closed in 1884 when the river dropped and never quite came back. later printings used imported paper from marindom, and the green leaned a fraction towards olive.
the city was absorbed in 1898 into a larger administration whose stamps were standardised and dull. the keys vanished from circulation, replaced by a generic eagle.
field-note · the keys on the early printings point downward — a city of opening; on the later ones, upward — a city of locking.
see also · marindom · 8 pf · korphavn · 25 öre · the key · the drawer · a coin