1 Thaler - Henry Julius

Henry Julius ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel from 1589 until his death in 1613, and 1598 falls squarely in the middle of his remarkably active minting program. He was among the first German princes to exploit the thaler as an instrument of political projection, issuing coins in extraordinary variety — Welter alone catalogues hundreds of distinct types from his reign. The Dav GT I#9076 attribution places this piece within the broader German Thaler series, a classification that understates just how aggressively Henry Julius used the Zellerfeld mint.

He was also a playwright of some note, one of the earliest German dramatists writing in the vernacular — an unusual biographical footnote for a coin-issuing prince.