1/2 Thaler - Anton Theodor of Colloredo-Waldsee

Anton Theodor von Wallis-Carignan — who adopted the Colloredo-Waldsee name upon his appointment — became Prince-Bishop of Olomouc in 1777, just two years before this piece was struck. His tenure coincided with Joseph II's aggressive Josephinist reforms, which stripped ecclesiastical territories of significant administrative and fiscal autonomy throughout the Habsburg lands. Coins issued from Olomouc during these years carry an unspoken tension: the Prince-Bishops were minting on borrowed authority, their temporal power visibly contracting under imperial pressure.

Anton Theodor would eventually be elevated to Cardinal in 1803, but the independent coinage tradition of the Bishopric effectively ended well before that.