1 Thaler - August

August the Younger became ruler of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in 1635 at the age of 71, inheriting a territory ravaged by three decades of the Thirty Years' War. His reign coincided with some of the war's most destructive final campaigns through Lower Saxony, yet he managed to keep Wolfenbüttel itself relatively intact through careful political maneuvering between Swedish and Imperial factions. The thaler coinage of these years was as much a declaration of functioning authority as anything else — minting continued where administration survived.

August was also one of the great bibliophiles of the seventeenth century; his personal library at Wolfenbüttel eventually became the Herzog August Bibliothek, still operating today.