1/2 Mariengroschen - George Henry

Waldeck-Pyrmont was among the smallest of the German states that retained the right to strike its own coinage into the nineteenth century, and it exercised that right sparingly. George Henry II ruled the principality from 1813 until his death in 1845, presiding over a territory so financially constrained that it relied heavily on Prussian administrative structures. This copper fractional issue dates to a period when small-denomination coinage across the minor German states was increasingly redundant — the German Customs Union was only eight years away from rendering much of it obsolete.