2 Pfennig - Hieronymus von Colloredo

Hieronymus von Colloredo is remembered by music historians almost exclusively as Mozart's employer — the Archbishop who kept the composer in servile conditions before Mozart's acrimonious dismissal from Salzburg service in 1781, the year before this coin was struck. As Archbishop-Prince, Colloredo also governed a sovereign ecclesiastical state, and these small copper issues were the practical currency of that administration. The dismissal and this minting are essentially concurrent.