1/2 Thaler - Francis Joseph I

The half thaler denomination had already been in slow decline before Francis Joseph I came to the throne in 1848, squeezed between the more commercially useful thaler and the smaller silver fractions. This particular issue belongs to the young emperor's first coinage reform push, which followed the political trauma of the 1848 revolutions and the Olmütz constitution — an attempt to project imperial stability through regularized, high-fineness silver at a moment when the empire's finances were anything but stable.

Austrian silver coinage of this window saw frequent die refinements at Vienna; the series was discontinued before the decade ended as the Convention standard gave way to newer monetary agreements with the German states.