1 'Dicke' Krone - Christian IV Closed crown

The "dicke" (thick) Krone was Christian IV's answer to a persistent problem: Danish trade in the Baltic and North Sea required a heavy silver coin credible enough to compete with the joachimsthaler and its derivatives. Christian had already demonstrated an obsessive interest in monetary reform, personally involving himself in mint administration to a degree unusual even among absolutist monarchs of the period. The 1624–1625 issues coincide with Denmark's increasingly expensive preparations for intervention in the Thirty Years' War, a campaign that would end in the humiliating Peace of Lübeck five years later and leave the Danish crown financially crippled for a generation.