Rudolph August had ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel alone since 1666, but in 1685 he invited his younger brother Anthony Ulrich into co-regency — partly to neutralize a rival power base, partly because Anthony Ulrich was the more capable administrator. The arrangement was uneasy. Anthony Ulrich was also a novelist of some reputation, a Catholic sympathizer in a Lutheran principality, and persistently ambitious. Coins struck under joint rule between 1685 and Rudolph August's death in 1704 document nearly two decades of that friction in metal.
Welter 2101 is specific to the 1692–1695 window, a period when Brunswick finances were under pressure from contributions to the Nine Years' War against Louis XIV.
Rudolph August had ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel alone since 1666, but in 1685 he invited his younger brother Anthony Ulrich into co-regency — partly to neutralize a rival power base, partly because Anthony Ulrich was the more capable administrator. The arrangement was uneasy. Anthony Ulrich was also a novelist of some reputation, a Catholic sympathizer in a Lutheran principality, and persistently ambitious. Coins struck under joint rule between 1685 and Rudolph August's death in 1704 document nearly two decades of that friction in metal.
Welter 2101 is specific to the 1692–1695 window, a period when Brunswick finances were under pressure from contributions to the Nine Years' War against Louis XIV.