A new pair of coins from the National Bank of Poland (Narodowy Bank Polski NBP) delving into the rich and turbulent history of this Central European country will be released on 08 November. One of the many critical times in Polish history, 1916 saw the beginning of settting up of a independent Polish state again. One of the key figures of the time was Józef Haller von Hallenburg.

Haller (August 13, 1873 – June 4, 1960) was a Lieutenant General of the Polish Army, a legionary in the Polish Legions, harcmistrz (the highest Scouting instructor rank in Poland), the President of the Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (ZHP), and a political and social activist. He fought in the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 against Ukraine, Russia and Germany, enjoying success in most cases.

As is typically the case with NBP coin pairs, the gold and the silver releases are completely different, not just the same coin struck in a different metal. The silver coin is rectangular and depicts a close up image of Jozef Haller in military uniform. It’s a fine facial depiction – subtle, well-drawn and struck. The gold coin is in the more traditional round format and a far less interesting design, quite pedestrian in comparison. It again depicts Haller, but in a small, floating head style, no attempt made to fit the coin surface. As you can probably guess, we far prefer the silver coin. Both have the cool looking Eagle emblem of the Republic of Poland on their obverse face.

The silver is limited to a maximum of 20,000 coins, with the gold mintage capped at 2,000 units. Both come in neat little boxes of identical design, but different colours. Dobrochna Surajewska did design honours on all but the gold reverse face, which was undertaken by Sebastian Mikolajczak.

The body of high-ranking officers involved in the formation, from November 1918, of the command of the Polish Army was mostly made up of fgures well-known to the public on account of their achievements. One such figure was certainly Józef Haller, without whom the volunteer Polish army in France, called the Blue Army and, with time, also Haller’s Army, would not have come to life. In 1918, the Army was recognized by the Entente countries as allied forces.

Józef Haller came from a family of landed gentry from Lesser Poland, boasting strong patriotic and religious traditions. The vicissitudes of his life show Poles’ tortuous paths to independence.Haller trained to be a soldier in the AustroHungarian army. Afer the outbreak of World War I, he became a co-founder of the Polish military formations fghting alongside the Austro–Hungarian forces. As commander of the 3rd Regiment of the Legions he waged bloody battles with the Russian army in the Carpathians.

Following changes on the international arena in 1918 a further alliance with the Central Powers was becoming pointless, and thus in February Haller renounced allegiance to Austria-Hungary and together with his soldiers advanced to Ukraine, taking charge of the 2nd Polish Corps stationed there. In May 1918, the Corps was defeated by the Germans near Kaniów; however, Haller managed to escape to France, where he became commander of the Blue Army, formed a year earlier. In April 1919 the army of approx. 70,000 well- -armed soldiers reached Poland, where they successfully fought against the Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia and against the Bolsheviks during the war of 1920.

On 10 February 1920, Józef Haller, as commander of the Pomeranian Front, performed a symbolic “marriage” of Poland to the Baltic Sea in the seaside town of Puck. The ceremony was a fitting culmination of the General’s contribution to Poland’s successful struggle for independence. Andrzej Chojnowski On 8 November 2016, Narodowy Bank Polski is putting into circulation collector coins of the series “100th Anniversary of Regaining Independence by Poland” – Józef Haller, a gold coin with a face value of 100 zł and a silver coin with a face value of 10 zł.