1 Pfennig - Wilhelm von Brandenburg

Wilhelm von Brandenburg served as Archbishop of Riga from 1539, but his tenure became increasingly untenable as the Livonian Confederation collapsed under sustained pressure from Ivan the Terrible's forces during the Livonian War, which began in 1558. These pfennigs were struck in the final years before the Archbishopric effectively ceased to function as an independent issuing authority — Riga submitted to Polish-Lithuanian suzerainty in 1561, stripping Wilhelm of meaningful secular power even as he retained his ecclesiastical title until his death in 1563.