1/4 Kreuzer - Bernhard II

Bernhard II ruled Saxe-Meiningen from 1803 until his death in 1837, governing one of the smaller Ernestine duchies of Thuringia through the post-Napoleonic reorganization that reshaped the German states. The 1/4 Kreuzer was the lowest practical denomination in circulation — a coin whose purchasing power was so marginal that examples survived in quantity simply because no one bothered to spend them into oblivion.

The Ernestine duchies struck their own copper well into the 1830s despite growing pressure toward monetary harmonization among the German states, a process that would eventually produce the Dresden Coinage Convention of 1838.