1/4 Thaler

Donauwörth's status as a Free Imperial City was already under pressure by the 1540s — the city had aligned with the Protestant cause early in the Reformation, a political gamble that would eventually cost it its imperial freedom entirely when Maximilian I of Bavaria used a disputed religious procession as pretext to occupy and mediatize the city in 1607. This quarter thaler predates that annexation by over six decades, struck while the city still exercised the minting rights that came with imperial immediacy.

The Thaler standard itself had only been codified by the Imperial Coinage Ordinance of 1524, making fractional issues like this one among the earliest generation of standardized divisional silver in the Empire.