2 Schillings

Stade issued this piece in 1621 during the thick of the Thirty Years' War, when the city's status as a major Hanseatic port on the Elbe made it both strategically coveted and financially pressed. Swedish forces would occupy the city in 1643, but in 1621 it remained under nominal Imperial authority — a precarious position that drove municipalities across northern Germany to assert local minting rights while central Habsburg power was stretched thin across multiple fronts.