11/2 Thaler - John Frederick Harz - Ausbeute - Löser

The Ausbeute coinage of the Harz mining districts represents one of the more precisely documented branches of 17th-century German silver production — these pieces were struck directly from ore yields ("Ausbeute") of specific mines, functioning as a kind of dividend-in-coin paid to the territorial lord. John Frederick of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Calenberg, who ruled Calenberg from 1665 until his death in 1679, was an aggressive consolidator of mining revenues in the Upper Harz, and the Löser format — these large, heavy presentation-grade multiples — served fiscal and diplomatic purposes simultaneously.

The Müseler reference places this firmly within the Clausthal mint's output for that period.