2 Goldgulden - John Frederick I

John Frederick I had already lost the Electoral dignity by 1552. Defeated at Mühlberg in 1547 by Charles V, he was stripped of the electorate and handed to the Albertine branch of the Wettins, yet he continued issuing coinage from his reduced Thuringian holdings under the Ernestinian style — a political assertion as much as a monetary one. This double gulden belongs to that defiant post-captivity period, struck while John Frederick remained technically a prisoner of the Empire.

The Ernestinian line's continued use of electoral titulature on coinage well after Mühlberg is a documented numismatic anomaly that frustrates clean cataloguing to this day.