2 Silbergroschen - William II and Frederick William

Hesse-Cassel's coinage in this period was complicated by a constitutional crisis that would eventually make the electorate a byword for reactionary governance — Elector William II spent much of his reign in conflict with his own estates over financial control, and his son Frederick William (the co-regent from 1831) was, if anything, worse. The joint obverse naming both rulers reflects the co-regency arrangement forced by William II's incapacitation, not any cooperative dynastic harmony.

KM#604 was struck at the Cassel mint under increasingly strained fiscal conditions. The .375 fineness places this squarely in the degraded billon issues common to smaller German states managing currency obligations under the Dresden Coin Convention of 1838.