1 Ducat - Anthony Ulrich Harz Ausbeute

Anthony Ulrich ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel for nearly six decades and was among the most culturally ambitious princes in the Holy Roman Empire — he wrote novels, patronized the arts, and converted to Catholicism in 1710, the same year this ducat was struck, a move that deeply unsettled the Protestant nobility of his own territory. "Ausbeute" issues like this one were struck directly from silver and gold extracted from the Harz mountain mines, a practice that tied the coin's very existence to a specific ore yield rather than general treasury production. The Harz mines at this period were in slow decline after their seventeenth-century peak.