Albrecht II ruled Austria from 1330 until his death in 1358, earning the epithet "the Lame" following a paralytic illness contracted around 1330 that left him physically incapacitated for the remainder of his reign. Despite this, his administration was regarded as competent and his monetary policies relatively stable by the fractious standards of fourteenth-century Central European coinage. These small silver pfennigs — Vienna's dominant small denomination throughout his tenure — circulated alongside a bewildering proliferation of regional bracteate and half-bracteate types that made standardization across the duchy a persistent administrative problem.
Albrecht II ruled Austria from 1330 until his death in 1358, earning the epithet "the Lame" following a paralytic illness contracted around 1330 that left him physically incapacitated for the remainder of his reign. Despite this, his administration was regarded as competent and his monetary policies relatively stable by the fractious standards of fourteenth-century Central European coinage. These small silver pfennigs — Vienna's dominant small denomination throughout his tenure — circulated alongside a bewildering proliferation of regional bracteate and half-bracteate types that made standardization across the duchy a persistent administrative problem.