1 Conventionsthaler - Louis I Geschichtstaler, Oberwittelsbach

The Geschichtstaler series — commemorative thalers issued by the German states throughout the 1820s–1840s — emerged partly as a political tool, allowing rulers to assert dynastic legitimacy and territorial identity within the fragmented German Confederation. Bavaria's contribution to the genre was notably ambitious. This piece commemorates Oberwittelsbach, the ancestral seat of the Wittelsbach dynasty in Upper Bavaria, which Ludwig I had restored as a dynastic monument beginning in the late 1820s.

Ludwig was an obsessive patron of historical memory, and the Geschichtstaler issues he commissioned rank among the most systematically conceived commemorative coin programs of the nineteenth century German states.