1/2 Thaler

Nuremberg struck these half thalers during the opening years of the Thirty Years' War, when the city's status as a free imperial city made it a critical — and increasingly pressured — node between Protestant and Catholic factions. The municipal council had authorized expanded silver coinage partly to manage the financial demands of fortification and mercenary contracts, and partly to assert fiscal independence at a moment when that independence was genuinely in question.

The Kipper und Wipper crisis of 1619–1622 had debased coinage across the German states so thoroughly that full-weight municipal silver carried a premium simply for being honest metal. Nuremberg's reputation for reliable striking made its issues circulate well beyond city limits.