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1 Thaler - Benedict
| Issuer | Abbeys of Werden and Helmstedt |
|---|---|
| Year | 1730 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Thaler |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Elaborately quartered coat of arms arranged in a six-fold configuration with a central oval shield bearing the Geismar arms — a bipartite composition showing the upper half of an eagle above a wheel — all enclosed within an ornate baroque oval cartouche. Three decorative helmets are displayed above the shield, with an abbatial mitre surmounting the central helmet. The full circumferential legend in Latin identifies the issuing abbot. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | BENEDICTVS.D.G.S.R.I.ABBAS.WERDINENSIS.&.HELMSTADIENSIS |
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| Additional information |
Werden and Helmstedt were Benedictine abbeys that held the unusual status of imperial immediacy — answering directly to the Holy Roman Emperor rather than any intervening secular or ecclesiastical lord — which granted them the right to strike their own coinage. By 1730, that privilege was increasingly anachronistic, and issues from this period reflect an institution asserting prerogatives it would lose within a generation. Napoleon's secularization decrees of 1803 extinguished both abbeys entirely.
KM#70 is among the later large silver issues of the combined abbeys and survives in comparatively small numbers, consistent with the limited minting activity of institutions whose financial and political weight had long been declining.