10 Kreuzers - Henry VIII of Bibra

Heinrich VIII von Bibra served as Prince-Bishop of Fulda from 1759 until the abbey's secularization in 1803, presiding over one of the oldest Benedictine foundations in German-speaking lands during a period of mounting pressure from Josephinist reforms and Enlightenment anticlericalism. The 1788 issue falls squarely in that uneasy middle period — the abbey still sovereign, still minting, but increasingly aware that its centuries-old status was not guaranteed. Fulda had held imperial immediacy since the 8th century; within fifteen years of this coin's striking, Napoleon's reorganization of German territory would extinguish it entirely.