2 Thalers - Frederick William I

Hesse-Cassel's Frederick William I ruled under one of the most reactionary regimes in German-speaking Europe during the 1850s, a period so politically fraught that his own minister-president Ludwig Hassenpflug — despised enough to earn the nickname "Hessian-Plague" — had to be reinstated by Austrian and Prussian troops after the electorate's parliament refused to seat him. The coinage of this period was struck against a backdrop of near-constant constitutional crisis; Frederick William had suspended the liberal constitution of 1831 and governed largely by decree.

The 2 Thaler denomination was a product of the Dresden Convention of 1838, which standardized the relationship between the North German Thaler and South German Gulden coinage systems. Hesse-Cassel's participation was characteristic of the small states clinging to monetary agreements as political ones frayed around them.