1 Thaler - John Frederick II, John William and John Frederick III

John Frederick II issued this thaler as co-ruler with his brothers following the catastrophic aftermath of the Schmalkaldic War. Their father, John Frederick the Magnanimous, had lost the Saxon electorate entirely to the Albertine branch at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547 — stripped of rank, territory, and the electoral dignity itself. The Ernestine line was reduced to rump holdings in Thuringia, and these joint-reign thalers document exactly that moment of dynastic contraction.

John Frederick II would later be imprisoned by Emperor Maximilian II in 1567 for sheltering the renegade knight Wilhelm von Grumbach — a confinement that lasted until his death in 1595.