1/2 Thaler - Bruno, William and John George

Mansfeld-Bornstedt was one of the smaller partitioned lines of the fragmented Mansfeld county, whose endless subdivisions among heirs produced an almost bewildering variety of coinage across the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Bruno, William, and John George ruled jointly — a co-regency arrangement that was financially precarious even by Mansfeld standards, a county already drowning in debt from its copper and silver mining operations in the Harz foothills.

Tornau 134b distinguishes this half thaler from related issues by die specifics documented in his 1894 Mansfeld corpus, still the authoritative reference for the series.