11/2 Pfennig - Charles August

Charles August ruled Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach during one of the most intellectually charged periods in German history — Goethe served as his chief minister for decades — but the duchy's copper pfennig issues were strictly practical, struck to address persistent small-change shortages that plagued the fragmented German states throughout the late eighteenth century. The 1½ Pfennig denomination itself was an awkward fraction, a product of local accounting conventions that made poor sense even to contemporaries.

KM#151 spans a production window that runs directly through the Napoleonic reorganization of 1806, when the duchy was elevated to a Grand Duchy under French pressure. Coins struck after that political shift were issued under a ruler with a newly elevated title.