1/4 Thaler - Georg III, Ludwig IV and Christian

Georg III, Ludwig IV, and Christian ruled Liegnitz-Brieg jointly as the last of the Silesian Piast line — a dynasty that had governed in Silesia since the thirteenth century. The joint portrait coinage of these three brothers reflects the duchy's particular succession arrangement, which kept the territory undivided among male heirs even as Habsburg pressure on Silesian autonomy intensified through the mid-seventeenth century. Christian, the youngest, outlived his brothers and died without a male heir in 1672, at which point the Habsburgs absorbed the duchy directly under the terms of the 1537 inheritance treaty they had long held in reserve.