1 Schilling - Frederick Francis II

Frederick Francis II was only a teenager when this coin entered circulation — he became Grand Duke in 1842 at age sixteen, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin's conservative estates resisted the constitutional reforms sweeping other German states throughout the 1840s. The duchy's monetary system remained stubbornly tied to older north German traditions long after neighbors had rationalized their coinage, which is why billon schillings of this type were still being produced well into the decade preceding the Vereinsmünze agreements that would eventually standardize German silver coinage.