1 Groschen - John George I Death

John George I of Saxony died in October 1656 after a reign of nearly four decades, during which he had navigated — not always skillfully — the catastrophic Thirty Years' War. Saxony's decision to switch sides against Sweden in 1635 shaped the final decade of that conflict and left the electorate economically hollowed out by the time of his death. Memorial groschen of this type were a standard Saxony funerary coinage convention, struck at Dresden to mark the passing of the elector and distributed as mourning pieces.

The Clauss/Kahnt reference places this squarely within the documented Dresden death coinage sequence for the mid-seventeenth century.