2 Groschen - Elizabeth

During the Seven Years' War, Russian forces occupied East Prussia from 1758 to 1762, and Empress Elizabeth ordered the Königsberg mint — a Prussian facility — to strike coins in her name for the occupied territory. It was a calculated act of administrative consolidation: by paying local wages and debts in Russian-issued coin, the occupation became financially self-reinforcing. Frederick the Great, watching his own mint struck in the name of his enemy, reportedly considered it among the more humiliating episodes of the war.

The occupation ended abruptly with Elizabeth's death in January 1762 and Peter III's immediate reversal of Russian war policy — the so-called Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.