1 Thaler

Magdeburg was razed and burned in May 1631 by Imperial and League forces under Tilly — one of the worst atrocities of the Thirty Years' War, killing upwards of 20,000 civilians. The city that struck this thaler seven years later was a ghost of its former self, rebuilding under Swedish protection after the massacre had wiped out roughly 85% of its population.

That a civic coinage existed at all in 1638 reflects the determination of the reconstituted municipal authority to reassert urban identity. Surviving examples from this period of Magdeburg's output are scarce precisely because the city's productive capacity had been so violently interrupted.