Göttingen's Körtling — a small regional silver denomination particular to northern Germany — was struck under the city's own municipal coinage rights during a period when such rights were jealously negotiated and frequently contested between towns and their territorial overlords. By 1494, Göttingen had long been a member of the Hanseatic League, and its coinage circulated primarily within the regional exchange networks of Lower Saxony rather than in long-distance trade. The Levinson corpus remains the standard reference for this material precisely because municipal issues of this type were catalogued so inconsistently in earlier German numismatic literature.
Göttingen's Körtling — a small regional silver denomination particular to northern Germany — was struck under the city's own municipal coinage rights during a period when such rights were jealously negotiated and frequently contested between towns and their territorial overlords. By 1494, Göttingen had long been a member of the Hanseatic League, and its coinage circulated primarily within the regional exchange networks of Lower Saxony rather than in long-distance trade. The Levinson corpus remains the standard reference for this material precisely because municipal issues of this type were catalogued so inconsistently in earlier German numismatic literature.