1 Thaler - Charles VII and Philip Ernest

Charles VII and Philip Ernest were the ruling counts of the Hohenlohe-Neuenstein and Hohenlohe-Waldenburg lines respectively, and joint coinage issues of this kind reflect the political necessity of maintaining dynastic unity while the Thirty Years' War was actively dismembering the Holy Roman Empire around them. Hohenlohe territory sat squarely in the path of competing armies throughout the 1620s, and silver thaler production in 1623 coincided almost exactly with the catastrophic currency debasement of the Kipper und Wipper period, which had so thoroughly corrupted smaller denominations that full-weight thalers became the only trusted medium for serious transactions.