1 Thaler

1635 placed Nuremberg at the geographic heart of the Thirty Years' War. The city had endured the catastrophic twin encampments of 1632, when both Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein besieged its outskirts simultaneously — not each other, but the city's food supply — leaving roughly 10,000 civilians and soldiers dead from starvation and disease within the walls before the Swedish army withdrew. That Nuremberg's mint was still producing full-weight thalers three years later is itself a statement about the city's financial infrastructure, which depended heavily on its role as a trading and banking hub even as the surrounding region was stripped bare.

The city would not see genuine peace for another thirteen years, until the negotiations concluded — fittingly — within Nuremberg itself in 1649.