1 Pfennig - Frederick August I

Frederick August I became Elector of Saxony in 1694 following the death of his brother John George IV, and these pfennigs belong to the very opening years of his rule — before his conversion to Catholicism in 1697 to qualify for the Polish throne, an act that scandalized Lutheran Saxony and permanently complicated his relationship with his own subjects. The timing places this issue at a dynastic inflection point of real consequence.

Silver pfennigs of this size were already something of an anachronism by the 1690s, with copper increasingly displacing silver at the lowest denominations across the German states.