1 Thaler - Francis Kleetaler

The Kleetaler — "clover thaler" — was struck to celebrate agricultural improvement on the Erbach estates, specifically the promotion of clover cultivation as a fodder crop, part of the broader agrarian reform movement sweeping German territories in the late eighteenth century. Erbach was a tiny imperial county in the Odenwald, and its counts had limited occasion to strike thalers; this issue is one of the last before mediatization absorbed such minor sovereignties into larger German states.

Francis I of Erbach-Erbach authorized the issue in 1793. The Joseph Erb census catalogues only a handful of confirmed examples.