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1 Thaler - August
| Issuer | Bishopric of Ratzeburg |
|---|---|
| Year | 1623 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 29.10 g |
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| Obverse description | Elaborately mantled achievement of arms featuring an eightfold quartered shield with the central escutcheon of Ratzeburg, surmounted by three ornate crested helmets with flowing lambrequins. The arms are arranged within a Spanish-style shield form. The circular legend in Latin surrounds the composition, identifying the issuing bishop by name and titles. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Full-length figure of a bishop in complete armor mounted on a horse in profile, advancing to the right. The date 1623 is divided between the hindquarters and forelegs of the horse. A mintmaster's symbol appears beneath the bishop's stirrup. The surrounding Latin legend alludes to ancestral virtues, rendered in an elegant early seventeenth-century style consistent with the period's high-relief thaler coinage. |
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| Additional information |
The Bishopric of Ratzeburg was a tiny Lutheran ecclesiastical territory wedged between Mecklenburg and Holstein, perpetually contested and chronically underfunded. August of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel administered it as coadjutor bishop from 1603 and ruled outright from 1613 — issuing this thaler in 1623, the year the Kipper und Wipper currency crisis was finally subsiding after having debased coinage across the Empire to catastrophic levels. A full-weight silver thaler from a minor bishop in that specific year carried implicit political messaging about fiscal reliability.
Ratzeburg thalers of this period are genuinely scarce survivors; the territory secularized to Mecklenburg-Schwerin by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.