1 Kreuzer - Louis VIII Gold Pattern

Louis VIII of Hesse-Darmstadt was a ruler whose court expenses chronically outpaced his territory's revenues, yet gold pattern strikings of the lowest copper denomination were occasionally produced as presentation pieces for distribution among favored courtiers and diplomats. A 1 Kreuzer in .986 gold at under a gram is less a monetary proposal than a deliberate absurdity — the gold content alone would have vastly exceeded the coin's face value by a factor of several hundred. Whether any official proposal for this denomination in gold ever reached the Darmstadt mint seriously is doubtful.