12 Grote

Bremen's 12 Grote occupied an awkward position in the German monetary patchwork of the 1840s, a locally-rooted denomination resisting the push toward Prussian-influenced standardization that would eventually consume most northern German monetary systems. The Grote itself was a north German accounting unit with medieval origins, and Bremen clung to it well past the point where neighboring states had rationalized their coinages.

The timing matters: these were struck in the years immediately preceding the revolutions of 1848, when pressure on the German city-states to confederate — monetarily and politically — was intensifying sharply.