1/2 Batzen - Leopold V of Tyrol

Murbach and Lüders, twin Alsatian abbeys operating under a single abbot, held the unusual privilege of minting their own coinage despite controlling no significant secular territory. Leopold V — simultaneously Archduke of Austria and, from 1626, Bishop of Strasbourg — served as their administrator during a period when the Thirty Years' War was beginning to disrupt currency circulation across the Upper Rhine. Billon fractions like this half Batzen filled the chronic small-change vacuum that larger silver issues could not address.