1⁄48 Thaler - Adolphus Frederick

Adolphus Frederick I came to rule Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1610 and would hold the duchy through some of its most turbulent decades, including the Thirty Years' War occupation by Wallenstein's imperial forces that briefly stripped him of his territory entirely between 1628 and 1631. This 1622 issue predates that crisis but falls squarely within the Kipper und Wipper period — the currency debasement catastrophe that swept the German states from roughly 1619 to 1623, during which dozens of minor mints exploited lax imperial oversight to flood markets with underweight small silver. That this piece retains a silver composition at all puts it toward the more honest end of contemporary minting practice.