1/2 Thaler

Hamburg's half thaler coinage of the mid-sixteenth century falls within a period of aggressive monetary reorganization across the Holy Roman Empire following the 1551 Reichsmünzordnung, which attempted — with limited success — to standardize thaler-denomination silver across the German states. Hamburg, jealous of its commercial independence and deeply invested in Baltic and North Sea trade, maintained its own minting prerogatives as a matter of civic policy rather than imperial compliance. Gaedechens 532 is among the earlier documented varieties of this denomination for the city.