5 Euro of Austria 2018 Ag BU - Lion Strength, New Year

Celebrating the 650th anniversary of the founding of the Austrian National Library, the New Year coin 2018 features the lustrous head of a lion that graces the cover of the oldest book among the millions in the library’s impressive collection. This spectacular seasonal coin has not only been conceived to congratulate the National Library, but also to wish a very happy 2018. May you have the strength of a lion!

At New Year, it is customary to think about the past before turning one’s attentions to the year ahead, but this year we have gone back to 1368 to find inspiration for our ever-popular first coin of the year. That was the year when catholic priest Johannes von Troppau was commissioned by Albert III, Duke of Austria, to transcribe and illuminate the four Gospels of the New Testament in gold. In addition to jewels, precious metals and artefacts, the treasure chambers of medieval monarchs also held the valuable books that they had either inherited or commissioned. A lover of art, who supported the University of Vienna and founded a royal workshop for illustrating manuscripts and translating them from Latin into German, Albert III (1349–1395) used his book collection to lay the foundations of the imperial library, the predecessor of today’s Austrian National Library.