Magdeburg had been virtually annihilated during the Thirty Years' War — the 1631 sack by Tilly's Imperial forces killed the majority of the population and left the city in ruins for years. By 1670, the city was operating under the terms of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which had transferred Magdeburg to Brandenburg as a hereditary duchy upon the death of the last Protestant administrator, a transition that completed in 1680. This groschen sits in the narrow window when Magdeburg still issued civic coinage under its own name before full absorption into the Hohenzollern administrative machinery.
Magdeburg had been virtually annihilated during the Thirty Years' War — the 1631 sack by Tilly's Imperial forces killed the majority of the population and left the city in ruins for years. By 1670, the city was operating under the terms of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which had transferred Magdeburg to Brandenburg as a hereditary duchy upon the death of the last Protestant administrator, a transition that completed in 1680. This groschen sits in the narrow window when Magdeburg still issued civic coinage under its own name before full absorption into the Hohenzollern administrative machinery.