1 Thaler - Christian Ulrich

Christian Ulrich ruled Württemberg-Oels, one of the fragmented Silesian duchies held by the Württemberg line under Piast-era inheritance arrangements that had left the region a patchwork of tiny Protestant territories surrounded by Habsburg Catholic pressure. This thaler was struck just a year after Christian Ulrich consolidated his hold on Oels following the death of his father Sylvius Nimrod in 1678 — the coin is essentially a declaration of continued sovereignty at a moment when such declarations carried real political risk.

Silesian thalers of this period were minted under constant scrutiny from Vienna, which had been systematically reducing Protestant ecclesiastical and civic rights in the region since the Thirty Years' War.