1 Heller

Nuremberg's heller coinage of the fifteenth century occupied an awkward economic niche — too small in silver content for serious commerce, yet essential for daily wage payments and small market transactions in one of the Holy Roman Empire's most commercially active cities. By 1443, the city council exercised near-complete control over its mint, having gradually wrested monetary autonomy from the burgraves over the preceding century. At this weight, the coin's silver content was marginal even by contemporary standards, and periodic municipal ordinances attempted to regulate the flood of underweight imitations entering Nuremberg from surrounding territories.