1 Fürstengroschen

Einbeck's civic coinage of the sixteenth century reflects the town's determined effort to maintain independent minting rights during a period when territorial princes were systematically absorbing such privileges. The Fürstengroschen denomination itself was a Saxon-originated type that free cities occasionally adopted as a practical means of producing recognizable, widely-accepted silver currency without implying feudal subordination. Einbeck had leveraged its wealth from the medieval brewing trade — it was among the most commercially significant brewing towns in northern Germany — to sustain monetary prerogatives that smaller municipalities had long since surrendered.