1 Heller - Louis II

By 1847, Hesse-Darmstadt was under mounting fiscal and political pressure that would boil over in the revolutions of 1848. Ludwig II had already granted a constitution in 1820 under duress, and the minor copper coinage of his final years circulated through a grand duchy whose population was increasingly restless. The heller, the smallest denomination in circulation, passed through hands that within a year would be building barricades in Darmstadt.