1/4 Thaler - Volrat VI, Jobst II, Wolfgang III and Bruno III Death

Volrat VI died in 1619, triggering this commemorative issue from the notoriously fractious Mansfeld mining county, where inheritances were perpetually contested among collateral branches of the family. The Mansfeld counts had divided and subdivided their silver-rich territories so many times by the early seventeenth century that joint-reign pieces naming multiple co-rulers were a bureaucratic necessity rather than a ceremonial gesture.

Tornau's catalog of Mansfeld coinage remains the specialist reference precisely because no general catalog handles the dynastic permutations adequately. KM#10 understates the complexity.