Fried, Torsten

Head of the Coin Cabinet at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin

Torsten Fried (*1959) is historian and numismatist. He is head of the Coin Cabinet at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin and lecturer at the University of Greifswald and the University of Rostock at the same time. His research focus is the coinage and monetary history of the Middle Ages and the early modern period.

Already during his studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Torsten Fried worked as a volunteer at the Numismatic Collection at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In 1987, he finished his studies in Medieval History as a graduate historian. In 1990, he obtained his doctorate, also at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His PhD thesis bears the title “Die Münzprägung in Thüringen vom Beginn der Stauferzeit (1138) bis zum Tode König Rudolfs von Habsburg (1291)” (The mintage in Thuringia from the beginning of the Staufer period (1138) to the death of King Rudolf of Habsburg (1291)).

In the following years, Torsten Fried worked as Research Associate at the Institute for Economic History of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin and at the Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar of Thuringia. In 1996, he started his work at the Coin Cabinet at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin.

Since 2002, Torsten Fried lectures at the Department of History of the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald. At the same university, he qualified as a professor in 2013 with a postdoctoral thesis on coins and medals as signs of princely rule in the time period from the middle of the 17th until the beginning of the 19th century taking the example of the dukes and grand dukes of Mecklenburg. Since 2018, he is also a lecturer at the Department of History of the University of Rostock.

Torsten Fried published numerous books and single contributions autonomously as well as in the position of an editor. Amongst them are “Geprägte Erinnerung. Der Bismarck-Mythos auf Medaillen” (in collaboration with Torsten Buchholz), “Handbuch der Münzkunde und des Geldwesens in Deutschland” (in collaboration with Wolfgang Trapp), “Prägende Herrschaft – Wallensteins Münzen und ihre Faszination” and “A History of Slav Princes and Russian Grand Duchesses – the Schwerin Coin Cabinet”.

Torsten Fried is a member of the Historische Kommission für Mecklenburg, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medaillenkunst and the Verein für mecklenburgische Geschichte und Altertumskunde. Furthermore, he is the representative of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the Numismatische Kommission der Länder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

You can contact Torsten Fried via email.

You can find out more about the research focus and the lectures of Torsten Fried on the websites of the University of Rostock and the University of Greifswald. There you will find also a publication list. (Both websites are only available in German.)

For information on the Coin Cabinet at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin click here.

We presented Torsten Fried’s postdoctoral thesis in a German article of CoinsWeekly.

“Geprägte Macht” can be purchased on the website of the Böhlau Verlag.