1 Ducat - Charles William Frederick

Charles William Frederick — known to contemporaries as the "Wild Margrave" for his erratic, often violent rule — governed Brandenburg-Ansbach from 1712 until his death in 1757. His court at Ansbach maintained ducal gold coinage partly as a matter of prestige; the margraviate was a small territory, and high-fineness gold issues functioned as diplomatic currency as much as anything circulating domestically. KM#189 is one of several ducat types struck under his name across the 1730s, a decade during which he was simultaneously alienating his subjects and negotiating his territory's relationship with the Hohenzollern dynasty in Berlin.