1/4 Thaler - Louis, Henry, Albert George, Christoph and Wolf Ernest

Stolberg's multi-lord coinage reflects the county's persistent practice of joint rule among agnatic heirs, a arrangement that produced some of the most administratively complex coinages of sixteenth-century German territorial minting. The five counts named on this issue — Louis, Henry, Albert George, Christoph, and Wolf Ernest — governed simultaneously under the Stolberg partition system, obligating the mint to acknowledge each lord's co-sovereignty on a single flan no larger than a quarter thaler's worth of silver.

Schult 3434 is scarce by any measure. Joint-reign issues of this type rarely achieved large mintages; the logistical and political overhead of coordinating five co-issuers in 1573 likely kept production runs modest.