1/2 Thaler

Nuremberg struck this half thaler in 1631, the same year Imperial and Catholic League forces sacked Magdeburg in the bloodiest atrocity of the Thirty Years' War. The city had been navigating an extraordinarily delicate position — officially Protestant, geographically exposed, and formally neutral while quietly supporting the Swedish intervention. Gustav Adolf's army was camped nearby by mid-year, and the city's coinage continued uninterrupted largely because Nuremberg's financial infrastructure was indispensable to both sides.

The Kellner reference places this among a well-documented sequence of half thalers from the city's prolific wartime output. Dies from this period show considerable variation in minor details across the Slg. Erlangen specimens.