1 Thaler Centenary of the Reformation

Worms issued this thaler in 1617 to mark exactly one hundred years since Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses — an act the city had particular claim to commemorate, having hosted the 1521 Imperial Diet where Luther refused to recant before Charles V. The centenary was celebrated across Protestant Germany with a wave of medal and coin issues, but Worms, as the site of Luther's most defiant stand, carried unusual historical weight in doing so.

Production was a civic statement as much as a monetary one. By 1617 Worms retained only a shadow of its medieval imperial importance, and the issue reflects a city asserting Protestant identity at a moment of mounting confessional tension, just one year before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War.