1 Pfennig - Adolphus Frederick I

Adolphus Frederick I came to power in Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1610 and spent much of his reign navigating the catastrophic opening phases of the Thirty Years' War, which had engulfed the Empire by the time this coin was struck. Small copper pfennig issues like this one proliferated across the German states during the Kipper- und Wipperzeit — a currency crisis of 1619–1623 in which mints debased and clipped coinage so aggressively that the entire small-denomination copper and billon economy effectively collapsed. Mecklenburg was no exception.