2 Ducats - Johann Christian and Georg Rudolf

Johann Christian and Georg Rudolf were brothers who ruled Liegnitz-Brieg jointly following the death of their father Joachim Friedrich in 1602, a co-regency arrangement that persisted until Georg Rudolf took sole control of Wohlau in 1612. The joint-issue coinage of this brief window — 1609 to 1610 — documents that transitional moment directly in metal. Silesian ducal coinages of this type are seldom encountered because the Thirty Years' War, which erupted just eight years later, devastated the region's aristocratic infrastructure and disrupted the survival of its finer issues.