1 Groschen - Ernest III

Ernest III ruled Schaumburg-Pinneberg through its final decades as an independent county — the line died out with his son Otto XIV in 1640, after which the territory was divided among neighboring claimants. This groschen was struck during the Thirty Years' War, when small silver coinage across the German states was debased so aggressively that the period earned its own name: the Kipper- und Wipperzeit, a currency crisis from roughly 1619 to 1623 in which mints across the Empire raced to produce underweight coins before their neighbors could do the same.