1/2 Gulden Coronation of Ferdinand I

Ferdinand I was crowned King of Germany at Aachen in January 1531, the last such coronation held in that city before the practice shifted definitively to Frankfurt. Aachen struck commemorative coinage for the occasion exercising the municipal minting privilege it had held since the Carolingian period — a right the city jealously defended against repeated imperial attempts to curtail it. This half gulden is among the earliest documented pieces in Menadier's classification of the issue, suggesting it was struck close to the ceremony itself rather than as a later civic souvenir.