1⁄48 Reichsthaler - Frederick Christian of Plettenberg

Frederick Christian von Plettenberg came to the bishopric in 1688 with strong ties to the Habsburg court, and his coins reflect the administrative normalization of Westphalian ecclesiastical minting after decades of disruption from the Thirty Years' War and its long fiscal aftermath. The 1⁄48 Reichsthaler denomination — one of the smallest silver fractions in the North German tariff system — was produced primarily to satisfy local wage and market transactions that larger specie could not practically serve.

Plettenberg's tenure saw Münster drawn increasingly into the orbit of Imperial politics; he would later play a role in the War of the Spanish Succession. This 1692 piece predates that entanglement by nearly a decade.