1 Thaler - Sylvius II Frederick Death of Elisabeth Maria

Württemberg-Oels was one of the smaller Silesian duchies held by a Protestant cadet branch of the Württemberg line, existing in a complicated position under Habsburg suzerainty throughout the seventeenth century. Elisabeth Maria, whose death this thaler commemorates, was the wife of Sylvius II Friedrich — these memorial issues were a firmly established convention among the German territorial princes, serving dynastic record-keeping as much as funerary sentiment. The Silesian mints producing such pieces in the 1680s operated under persistent pressure from Vienna, and the duchy itself would be extinguished and absorbed by Habsburg administration within a generation of this coin's striking.