1 Thaler - John Philip I, John William IV and Frederick William II

Saxe-Altenburg was itself a product of the 1602 partition of Ernestine Saxony, and the three dukes named on this coin ruled jointly under the terms of that dynastic arrangement — a cumbersome but legally binding co-regency that forced their names onto a single coin face regardless of political reality on the ground. The years of issue, 1626–1632, fall squarely within the most destructive phase of the Thirty Years' War, when Thuringia was repeatedly crossed by armies of both the Catholic League and later Swedish forces under Gustav Adolf.

John William IV died in 1632, the same year Swedish troops were operating throughout the region following the Battle of Lützen.