1 Thaler

Konstanz issued thalers during a period of acute political precariousness — the city had broken with the Habsburg emperor Charles V over the Reformation, aligning with the Schmalkaldic League, and was effectively gambling its civic independence on Protestant survival. These coins were struck knowing that a Habsburg reconquest would end the city's minting rights entirely. That reconquest came in 1548, when Konstanz was forced to surrender and lost its status as a Free Imperial City, making the 1537–1541 thaler series among the final expressions of genuinely autonomous municipal coinage from this issuer.