1 Mariengroschen - Anna II of Limburg

Anna II von Limburg served as abbess of Herford from 1524 until her death in 1565, one of the longer tenures in the abbey's medieval history. Herford was an imperial abbey — a Reichsstift — giving its abbess the status of an imperial princess with the right to mint coin, a privilege Herford had held since the Ottonian period. The Mariengroschen denomination itself was a north German regional standard, its name referencing the Virgin Mary whose image was conventional on such issues across Westphalian ecclesiastical mints.

Anna's abbacy spanned the full eruption of the Reformation in northern Germany. Herford's civic population largely adopted Lutheranism by the 1540s, creating sustained tension between the Protestant town and the Catholic imperial abbey that continued well past her death.