Archaeologists discover a treasure trove of silver coins hidden for almost 400 years

Archaeologists in Brandenburg an der Havel uncovered a copper kettle that once held silver coins from the time of the Thirty Years’ War. The silver stash has been undisturbed for about 400 years beneath Gotthardtkirchplatz.

Only three coins survived in and around the kettle, and each came from a different city. The mix points to how far money moved across early 1600s Europe.

Finding Gotthardtkirchplatz silver

Excavations tied to an addition at the Sonnensegel youth art gallery opened the site for careful digging at Gotthardtkirchplatz 3 – a square in the old town district of Brandenburg an der Havel.

The work is led by the Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and Archaeological State Museum (BLDAM).

Three silver coins in a copper kettle were contained in the discovery. The coins were found in the debris of a half-timbered house abandoned during the war.

“The special thing about the coins is that they serve as evidence of the extensive national and international trade connections of that time,” said Christof Krauskopf, the press spokesman for BLDAM.

Archaeologists noticed coin impressions measuring roughly 1.2 to 1.6 inches in diameter and about 0.06 inches thick in the kettle.

A house, a hill, and deep time

The kettle lay where a house once stood on the church hill. The home was later leveled, leaving rubble and household metalwork in place.

Excavation records from the state museum describe evidence of prehistoric settlement and a Slavic tree-trunk coffin burial found throughout the site.

Because Gotthardt Church stands on a hill, older soils survived above glacial deposits. The cemetery reached across nearby properties and stayed in use longer than expected.

Hiding the Gotthardtkirchplatz silver

The war overlapped with the so-called Kipper und Wipper crisis, a period of aggressive coin debasement and inflation across German lands.

When low-grade coins circulated widely, those who trusted solid silver often held on to their high-quality pieces.

Debasement – reducing a coin’s precious metal content – made trustworthy coins even more valuable. Stashing a few of these stronger pieces in a vessel at home would have been a prudent precaution.

The Swiss piece is a Dicken, a thick early modern silver coin, from Zug dated 1610 with Saint Oswald. 

The Dutch half rijksdaalder, literally meaning “imperial dollar,” dates to 1618. It was the Dutch version of the same coin standard used across northern Europe, a large silver piece valued for its reliable silver content. Its weight and fineness match the rijksdaalder standard described in an NGC coin price guide.

The Hamburg city coin, minted in 1634, bears the name of Ferdinand II. The Dutch coin aligns with the Reichsthaler, the German term for the same type of large silver coin used in the Holy Roman Empire and later German states from the 16th to 19th centuries.

Together, the three coins show how money from distant mints could end up in a single household.

Small scraps, big clues

Seven pieces of copper alloy sheet, small slag fragments, and eight blobs of lead solder turned up in the same layer. That toolkit points to a nonferrous metalsmith, a craft worker in copper and brass, living in the house.

Lead solder, used to join thin metal sheets, provides insight into the workshop methods of the period.

The kettle suggests a household where metalworking tools were readily available and repair work was part of everyday life.

Life around the church hill

Excavations at Gotthardtkirchplatz also shed light on how people once lived near St. Gotthardt Church.

Layers of domestic waste, hearth ash, and pottery fragments show that the hill was not just a sacred space but a busy residential area through the Middle Ages.

Archaeologists believe craftsmen and small traders clustered near the church to serve local demand and passing travelers. 

Workshops like the metalsmith’s would have repaired tools, household goods, and perhaps church fittings – linking daily labor with the spiritual and commercial heart of the old town.

Lessons from Gotthardtkirchplatz silver

Archaeologists read stratigraphy, the ordered layers of soil and debris, to sort events. Below the house level lies soil formed after the Ice Age, and above it sit medieval surfaces from the 1100s.

That sequence pins the coins to a moment in local life during the war. It also shows how the church hill preserved deep history beneath a modern square.

Conservators at the state museum will assess the coins and decide how quickly to treat the silver. The plan is to display them for the museum’s 75th anniversary in 2028.

Three coins may seem insignificant, yet their journey from Zug to the Dutch Republic to Hamburg traces a vivid thread through a turbulent century.

Together, the kettle, the coins, and the workshop scraps transform a single address into a story of risk, labor, and connection.

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