2 Thalers - Simon VII

Simon VII ruled Lippe from 1579 until his death in 1613, meaning this coin was struck posthumously — a memorial issue ordered by his successor Simon VIII to honor the father who had steered the county through the worst years of confessional conflict in northwestern Germany. Such retrospective thaler-format pieces were not uncommon among the smaller Protestant territories of the Reich, where projecting dynastic continuity carried real political weight in the years immediately preceding the Thirty Years' War.