Anhalt-Bernburg was one of the smallest and most financially strained of the German principalities, and Frederick Albert's reign from 1765 to 1796 saw the court perpetually dependent on Prussian goodwill to remain solvent. The 1/48 Thaler denomination — a pfennig-scale billon piece — was the working coinage of laborers and market stalls, not courts. That a principality of Bernburg's size maintained its own mint and issued coins down to this fractional level speaks more to the politics of German territorial sovereignty than to any economic necessity.
Anhalt-Bernburg was one of the smallest and most financially strained of the German principalities, and Frederick Albert's reign from 1765 to 1796 saw the court perpetually dependent on Prussian goodwill to remain solvent. The 1/48 Thaler denomination — a pfennig-scale billon piece — was the working coinage of laborers and market stalls, not courts. That a principality of Bernburg's size maintained its own mint and issued coins down to this fractional level speaks more to the politics of German territorial sovereignty than to any economic necessity.