12 Mariengroschen - Anthony Ulrich

Anthony Ulrich ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel for nearly half a century and spent much of it at war with his own finances — his court at Wolfenbüttel was modeled deliberately on Versailles, and the expenditure nearly broke the duchy. The 12 Mariengroschen denomination was a workhorse of Lower Saxon commercial life, pegged to a system of account that predated the Reichstaler and stubbornly persisted alongside it.

Anthony Ulrich converted to Catholicism in 1710, a remarkable move for a Protestant prince, reportedly to smooth his grandson's path to the Habsburg succession. Coins struck after that conversion but before his death in 1714 carry no confessional trace — the Mariengroschen remained denominationally Lutheran in everything but the ruler behind it.