1 Pfennig - Hermann von Brüggeneye Riga

Hermann von Brüggeneye served as Master of the Livonian Order from 1535 until his death in 1549, a period of mounting pressure from both Lutheran reformers restructuring the Baltic ecclesiastical order and an increasingly aggressive Muscovy under Ivan IV. These small billon pfennigs were struck at Riga, then the commercial heart of Livonian territory, and functioned as the lowest practical denomination in a monetary system already straining under political fragmentation. The Livonian Order's coinage authority was perpetually contested — the Archbishop of Riga maintained his own mint, and jurisdictional conflicts between the two powers over Riga itself had simmered for decades before Brüggeneye's tenure.