1/2 Thaler - Christian

Liegnitz-Brieg was one of the last Piast-dynasty duchies in Silesia, and its rulers spent much of the mid-seventeenth century in a slow diplomatic death spiral with the Habsburgs over succession rights. Christian, who ruled from 1654, knew the duchy would revert to Habsburg Austria upon his death under the terms of the 1537 hereditary treaty — a clause the Piasts had contested for over a century without success. He died in 1672, and the Habsburgs absorbed the territory almost immediately.

Coins struck in his final years carry that particular weight of an administration minting against a deadline it could not stop.