1⁄16 Thaler - John Moritz

John Moritz of Nassau-Siegen — Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen to the Dutch — is one of the more extraordinary figures to have coins struck in his name. He governed Dutch Brazil from 1637 to 1644, commissioned some of the earliest scientific and artistic documentation of the Americas, and returned to Europe to serve the Brandenburg court before eventually inheriting Nassau-Siegen in 1664. This small silver fraction was struck near the very end of his life; he died in 1679.

Nassau-Siegen's minting activity in this period was intermittent and the emission short-lived, which accounts for the relative difficulty of the type.