The last Ethiopian emperor had to abdicate after a military coup in 1974. However, you can still encounter an empress every day in many regions of the country. Many Ethiopian women wear heavy silver jewellery around their necks bearing the likeness of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. What is behind this jewellery?
Time and again in the Ethiopian highlands, you see women wearing eye-catching silver jewellery on their chests. They show the portrait of an elderly lady. If you ask the wearers who the striking woman is, they don't know the right answer. Some assume it is Mary, the mother of Jesus, promising themselves protection from her neck jewellery.
The first name Maria is not wrong: in fact, they bear the likeness of Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, the ruler of the vast Habsburg Empire from 1740 until her death in 1780.
The peasant women's silver jewellery was once a means of payment and millions of pieces were minted in Austria: From 1751, the regent had the new ‘Maria Theresa Thaler’ issued as money valid throughout the empire. Over the years, the coin showed various depictions of the weighty empress in profile, and after 1780 an old portrait with a widow's cap and a slight double chin. In the following decades, British traders not only called the coin the ‘Maria Theresa Dollar’, but also labelled it with the less than charming nickname ‘Fat Lady’.
Austria used the Maria Theresa thaler for international trade in the 18th century and made good money from its silver mines. There was a general shortage of silver in Europe, as spices and silk were often paid for in silver coins and were channelled to Asia. The Habsburg Monarchy profited from this. It was able to export the thalers at a profit. Because the weight and the very high silver content of the coins remained constant and they were relatively forgery-proof due to numerous features, the thaler became a ‘hard currency’ in the Levant, Arabia and East Africa. The coins continued to be minted after the death of Maria Theresa, with around 400 million being minted over the decades and centuries - which is why their value is limited: They are offered for as little as 25 francs in online coin shops today.
There were other means of payment in the Horn of Africa, such as cloth and salt, as well as some local coins and glass beads for small trade. But of course the traders preferred to pay in jingling coins: Instead of heavy salt bars, they only had to carry thalers as a means of payment. Instead of entire camel caravans of salt, a few donkeys could carry the boxes of thalers.
But the really big transactions were still a challenge. In a scientific essay, the Ethiopian Richard Pankhurst reports on a businessman who wanted to buy 100 tonnes of coffee in the west of the country and sent twenty donkeys loaded with coins on the journey for the cost of 32,000 thalers.
Austrian silver thalers were still the main currency in Ethiopia well into the 20th century. Fascist Italy also minted the coin in the 1930s: Mussolini's troops invaded Ethiopia, with the thalers in their marching baggage, with the help of which they were to succeed in subjugating the Ethiopians and consolidating power.
After the Second World War, the Ethiopian emperor banned trade in the thaler, meaning that the coins were only useful as jewellery. The Ethiopian currency birr (which incidentally means ‘silver’) prevailed. Many of the thalers were melted down from July 1945. Even today, silversmiths in the Mercato district of Addis Ababa still use the coins to make new jewellery. And on 14 September 1947, the New York Times reported that a freighter had arrived from Port Sudan with 1,000 boxes of Maria Theresa thalers on board, weighing a total of 45 tonnes, around 1.6 million coins, on behalf of the State Bank of Ethiopia. At the time, according to the newspaper, the silver had a material value of around one million US dollars. In the coin trade, at a price of 25 francs per coin, this treasure would theoretically be worth 40 million francs today.
The Maria Theresa thaler shows a double-headed eagle and imperial crown on the reverse. Today's paper money naturally favours other motifs. In 2020, the Ethiopian National Bank introduced new notes. The 50 Birr note features a tractor ploughing, while the reverse shows a factory - a promise that the country can develop and become an industrialised nation. The prerequisite for this is well-trained people. Menschen für Menschen is also working on this every day: that Ethiopia will win the fight against poverty through education.
