3 Ducats - Maximilian

The Teutonic Order's monetary issues of the early seventeenth century reflect an institution in slow institutional decline — stripped of its Prussian territories by secularization in 1525, the Order had retreated to its remaining holdings in the Holy Roman Empire under successive administrators who nonetheless maintained the full ceremonial apparatus of a sovereign, coinage included. Maximilian of Austria, who held the position of Grand Master from 1590 to 1618, used issues like this to assert continued independence from Habsburg absorption, despite being himself an archduke of the house.

Fr#3379 is among the scarcer Teutonic gold multiples of the period. Surviving examples turn up almost exclusively in old European cabinet collections.