1 Schilling - Gotthard Kettler Mitau

Gotthard Kettler founded the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia in 1561 under Polish-Lithuanian suzerainty, having secularized the remnant Livonian Order territories following the catastrophic Livonian War. These schillings, struck at Mitau across three years in the mid-1570s, reflect the duchy's early effort to establish a functioning monetary identity separate from the dissolved Order's coinage — billon being the practical reality for a small, war-exhausted state still rebuilding administrative infrastructure. Kettler died in 1587, leaving a duchy that would outlast him by over two centuries.