11/2 Guldengroschen - George the Bearded

George the Bearded was among the most intransigent Catholic princes in the Empire during the early Reformation — he banned Luther's New Testament translation within his territories and prosecuted evangelical preachers with unusual vigor. The large-flan multiple guldengroschen issues of his reign were partly a prestige project, demonstrating that Albertinian Saxony could mint on the same monumental scale as the Habsburgs while remaining conspicuously orthodox. The Annaberg and Buchholz mines in the Erzgebirge were producing sufficient silver in the 1520s to make such heavy multiples economically viable rather than merely ceremonial.

The 1½ guldengroschen denomination itself was short-lived in Saxony, abandoned as unwieldy in everyday trade.