1/2 Thaler - Christian Death of Christian

Christian of Liegnitz-Brieg died in 1672 as the last male of the Piast line in Silesia, a dynasty that had governed the region since the thirteenth century. The Habsburgs had long maneuvered for this inheritance, and upon his death Emperor Leopold I immediately absorbed Liegnitz, Brieg, and Wohlau into the Bohemian Crown, ignoring a 1537 succession treaty with Brandenburg that Frederick the Great would later cite as justification for the First Silesian War.

Coins struck at Christian's death functioned as formal mourning issues — a convention among German princes — and this half thaler belongs to that commemorative emission rather than circulating coinage.