1 Thaler - Francis Henry

Friedberg was one of the more anomalous entities within the Holy Roman Empire — a free imperial city that functioned simultaneously as a military garrison town, its defense contracted to a hereditary burgrave family rather than maintained by the city itself. Francis Henry of Leiningen-Dagsburg-Falkenburg held that burgrave title, and his appearance on city coinage reflects the peculiar dual authority that governed Friedberg for much of its imperial history. The city's minting rights were jealously exercised in these late decades precisely because their extinction was foreseeable; Friedberg lost its imperial immediacy entirely after 1806.