2 Pfennige - Charles August

Charles August ruled Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach as a genuinely reformist duke — later Grand Duke — who attracted Goethe, Schiller, and Herder to Weimar, making his small state culturally outsized relative to its political weight. These copper pfennige were struck during the final years of his reign, which ended with his death in June 1828. The Thuringian states maintained their own copper coinage well into the 19th century despite ongoing pressure toward German monetary consolidation, largely because low-denomination copper served local circulation needs that larger coin unions had little interest in standardizing.