2 Pfennige - John

John (Johann) ascended the Saxon throne in 1854 following the death of his brother Frederick Augustus II, who died after being thrown from a carriage. These pfennige were struck under John's authority during the early years of his reign, before Saxony's monetary system was absorbed into the unified German coinage framework following the North German Confederation's reorganization of the 1870s. John was a serious classical scholar who published a noted translation of Dante's Commedia under the pseudonym Philalethes — an unusual distinction for a reigning monarch.