Rappen
A
Rappen originally was a variant of the medieval Pfennig common to the Alemannic German regions Alsace, Sundgau and Northern Switzerland. As with other German pennies, its half-piece was a Haller, the smallest piece which was struck. Today, one-hundredth of a Swiss franc is still officially called a
Rappen in German and Swiss German. In French speaking Switzerland, the modern Swiss coins are called
centime and "centimes", in Italian speaking Switzerland,
centesimo and "centesimi" respectively. The origin of the term can be traced back to the
Rappenpfennig, a form of the penny minted in Freiburg im Breisgau in the 13th century featuring an eagle, which later on was interpreted to depict a raven. Due to the coin's wide circulation in the Upper Rhine region, it was adopted as standard currency in the so-called
Rappenbund, a union of regional mints formed in 1399 that included the Bishop of Basel and most of the region's larger cities. After the dissolution of the Rappenbund in 1584, a number of Swiss states continued to mint rappen within their territories, where they remained in local use until the middle of the 19th century.