1 Pfennig

Magdeburg in 1621 was a city under extreme pressure — the Thirty Years' War had been grinding through German territories for three years, and the breakdown of normal imperial monetary supply forced dozens of municipal authorities to strike emergency copper coinage. Magdeburg's situation was particularly acute: the city would endure a catastrophic siege culminating in its near-total destruction and massacre in May 1631, killing an estimated 20,000 residents. These municipal issues were struck precisely because trust in larger denominational coinage had collapsed during the Kipper- und Wipperzeit, the inflationary currency crisis of 1619–1623.