Gotthard Kettler was the last Master of the Livonian Order, and 1559 was effectively the year he dismantled it. Facing simultaneous invasion from Ivan the Terrible's forces in the east and political pressure from Poland-Lithuania to the south, Kettler negotiated the Union of Vilnius in 1559 and formally secularized the Order in 1561, converting its territories into the Duchy of Courland under Polish suzerainty. Coinage struck in his name as Master therefore spans only the collapse itself.
The ferding denomination was peculiar to Livonian monetary reckoning — a regional unit with no direct parallel in western European systems.
Gotthard Kettler was the last Master of the Livonian Order, and 1559 was effectively the year he dismantled it. Facing simultaneous invasion from Ivan the Terrible's forces in the east and political pressure from Poland-Lithuania to the south, Kettler negotiated the Union of Vilnius in 1559 and formally secularized the Order in 1561, converting its territories into the Duchy of Courland under Polish suzerainty. Coinage struck in his name as Master therefore spans only the collapse itself.
The ferding denomination was peculiar to Livonian monetary reckoning — a regional unit with no direct parallel in western European systems.