1 Vereinsthaler - Louis II

The Vereinsthaler was the product of the Dresden Mint Convention of 1838 and its successor agreements, which bound the German states to a common silver standard in advance of full political unification. Bavaria's participation was never purely economic — the Munich mint's output served as a quiet assertion of Wittelsbach authority at a moment when Prussia was consolidating its dominance over the northern states. Louis II ascended in March 1864 at eighteen years old, and these thalers were struck across the first two years of his reign before the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 rendered the entire Vereinsthaler system politically obsolete almost overnight.