2 Thalers / 3½ Gulden - Ernest II

Ernest II became Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1844 following the death of his father, Ernest I, and spent much of his reign navigating the fractious politics of German unification — a liberal constitutionalist who backed the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848 and never quite abandoned those sympathies. The dual denomination on this piece, expressing value simultaneously in the north German thaler standard and the south German gulden convention, reflects the monetary friction that plagued the German states before Bismarck resolved the question by other means.

The Dresden Coinage Convention of 1838 had attempted to bridge exactly this divide, and double-thaler issues of this type were among its more tangible products.