2 Ducats Bicentenary of the Reformation

Nuremberg issued this piece for the 1717 bicentenary of Luther's posting of the Ninety-Five Theses — an event the city had particular cause to commemorate, having adopted Lutheranism officially in 1525, among the earliest major imperial cities to do so. The anniversary generated a wave of commemorative medal and coin production across Protestant German states, but Nuremberg's output was notably ambitious given the city's already diminished political standing by the early eighteenth century.

By 1717 the city was financially exhausted, deeply indebted, and barely functioning as an autonomous entity — it would be absorbed into Bavaria less than ninety years later.