For this commemorative print in the form of a banknote (or commemorative print for short), G. J. Mendel has been officially selected to honor the 200th anniversary of his birth.
It is issued by České dukáty Czech Ducats) in cooperation with Společně, o.p.s., the coordinator of the commemoration, along with the State Printing Works of Securities, s.p. and Tiskarna Imperia (a Prague based printing house).
The commemorative print is issued in a total edition of 2,500 pieces. The price per piece is 2 490 CZK. The issue is divided into five series A,B,C,D,E of 500 pieces each.
So you can order one commemorative print from each series with the same number (we will assign the number according to availability).
The creatorof the art design, line drawings and steel engraving of the portrait of Mendel is Academic Painter Rudolf Cigánik. The digital processing is created by Stanislav Trokšiar.
The front side is dominated by a portrait of Gregor Johann Mendel. He was a scientist, who is regarded abroad as an equal of Charles Darwin and whose professional life is connected with Brno. The commemorative print works with motifs essential to his life and pioneering work. Which is his seminal paper “Experiments with Plant Hybridization” from 1865. The manuscript of which is owned by the Brno Augustinian Abbey. Part of the facsimile is on the upper part of the print.
A priest, naturalist, meteorologist, but also a passionate beekeeper - three bees represent this meritorious activity of Mendel. In the background is an engraving of a pea, the plant on which Mendel tested his theory of heredity.
The yellow spheres floating to the left above the illustration of a living microscopic structure are tiny peas whose random scattering is generated by special software. In part, they perform a protective function on the commemorative print and also graphically depict the transformation in the process of plant development.
On the right, one can recognise the DNA helix and the stars are a representation of Mendel's "Law of Random Gene Segregation". This motif will function as a hallmark on the commemorative prints.
On the reverse side, the Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary stands out prominently in the foreground. It is part of Brno's Augustinian Abbey, which stands on the site of the oldest church in Old Brno. The full plan of the monastery can be found on the top left. This is where J. G. Mendel became a novice and later an abbot in 1843.
Gregor Mendel was awarded the Order of Franz Joseph, third class (rank of Commander), whose depiction partially overlaps the floor plan. This took place in 1872 for his services to scientific knowledge.
St. Augustine, the founder of the Augustinian Order, is depicted here with the attributes of a flaming heart and an open book.
The motto "One Mind One Heart" is related to this. It refers to several biblical quotations and exhorts us to be a society of "one mind and one heart".
The commemorative print in the form of a banknote (the so-called "commemorative print") is a product of the company České dukáty (Czech Ducats), which has long been dedicated to minting collector medals and issuing commemorative prints of the highest quality.
The commemorative print has the attributes of a real banknote - in particular top-quality artwork, hand engraving and protective elements including numbering, but it has no face value. It is issued in a limited edition.
The Czech ducats are issued in two collector cycles. The first is Personalities and Events of Czechoslovak History, for which the first commemorative ducat was created in 2021, which is dedicated to Václav Havel. The second cycle of memorial prints was followed by a commemorative print for the 50th birthday of Jaromír Jágr and now a commemorative print is dedicated to G. J. Mendel.
Another Memorial Print is dedicated to the charity "Glory to Ukraine", which can be purchased on the 2022ukrajina.cz website.
Johann Gregor Mendel was a natural scientist, founder of genetics and discoverer of the basic laws of heredity. He worked as an abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Old Brno. He was born on 20 July 1822 in a family of German-speaking small farmers in Hynčice in Silesia (today in the district of Nový Jičín in the Moravian-Silesian Region). He died on 6 January 1884 in Brno.
In spite of the very poor material conditions of his family, he managed to complete secondary school and, after entering the priesthood in Brno, he graduated from the University of Vienna. In 1856, he returned to Brno, as a brother in the Augustinian monastery and later its abbot. Mendel then carried out his experiments with the crossing of pea plants. In 1862 he began meteorological observations, which he carried out with great accuracy almost until the end of his life. His works on beekeeping are also pioneering.
The basic laws of heredity - the greatest discovery in biology in the last 500 years - were formulated by Mendel in 1866 based on his analyses of crosses between pea plants. He used probability theory in his calculations, a field that was completely unknown to most biologists at the time. Mendel's work, which was not fully appreciated until after his death, laid the foundation for a new discipline that studies the transmission of hereditary information from one generation to the next.
His name is now borne by a museum, a university, a square in Brno and the first Czech scientific station in Antarctica.
Currently, international postage stamps are the dominant work of the Slovak artist Rudolf Cigánik. However, he has also done book illustrations. His works have received many awards at home and abroad. He regularly takes first place in the competition for the most beautiful stamp in the world at "NexoFil World's Best Stamp."
While he was still a young student he created an avant-garde concept of life-size sculptures and regularly exhibited and presented his work at important social and cultural events. He founded the company Tiskárna Impéria s.r.o., Engraving and Printing, specializing in luxury, artistic and security prints. He is an admirer of traditional printing techniques, through which he discovered kindred spirits with professional graphic artists, engravers, etc., with whom he has realized a number of valuable prints. In addition to his regular design work, he is also involved in the design of prints of a valuable nature and the creation of valuable security features. He cooperates with the Czech State Printing House of Securities.
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