1/2 Thaler - August Death

Duke August the Younger of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel died in March 1666 at the age of 88 — extraordinarily old for a seventeenth-century German prince. He had ruled for nearly three decades and built one of the largest private libraries in Europe at Wolfenbüttel, a collection that survives today as the Herzog August Bibliothek. Memorial coinage was a well-established Brunswickian tradition, and the ducal mint moved quickly to produce mourning issues across multiple denominations. The 43mm flan required for a half thaler gave the Wolfenbüttel engravers considerably more working surface than the smaller memorial pieces in the same series.