1 Thaler - Louis IV

Louis IV of Hessen-Marburg ruled only half a territory — and a contested one at that. When Landgrave Ludwig IV of Hesse-Marburg died in 1604, he controversially willed the Marburg portion of Hesse back to be reunified rather than allowing it to pass to either Hessen-Kassel or Hessen-Darmstadt outright, a decision that sparked the Hessian Succession dispute and drew both lines into protracted legal and eventually military conflict. These thalers, struck in the closing years of his reign, predate that crisis but were issued by a landgrave already maneuvering his territorial legacy.

The multiple Schütz references reflect genuine die variation across the issue, not mere cataloging redundancy.