1 Pfennig - Frederick Francis II

1872 was the last year Mecklenburg-Schwerin struck its own coinage before German unification standardized the imperial currency system. The new Reich's Münzgesetz of 1871 gave German states a two-year window to exhaust their minting authority, and this Pfennig sits at the very end of that window for Mecklenburg-Schwerin — one of the final acts of numismatic independence from one of Europe's oldest ruling dynasties, the House of Mecklenburg, whose sovereign lineage stretched back to the 12th century.

Frederick Francis II had ruled since 1842. He died in 1883, outliving his own coinage by over a decade.