1 Schildgroschen - Frederick I Gotha

The Schildgroschen type was introduced in Meissen as a response to the debasement crisis plaguing the region's smaller groschen denominations in the early fifteenth century. Frederick I — the Warlike — ruled a fragmented territorial inheritance that required constant coinage to fund military campaigns, including his prolonged conflict with the Hussites. The Gotha mint attribution distinguishes this piece from contemporaneous Meissen and Leipzig strikes of the same type, though output from all three facilities fed the same regional circulation pool.