3 Groschen - John Frederick II Klippe, Siege coinage

John Frederick II, Duke of Saxony, was besieged in Gotha's Grimmenstein fortress by Imperial forces in 1567 after refusing to accept the terms imposed following his father's catastrophic defeat at Mühlberg twenty years earlier. The city struck klippe coinage — square flans cut from sheet silver rather than cast or rolled stock — specifically because the machinery required for round planchet production was unavailable under siege conditions. This piece is a direct artifact of that military stalemate, which ended when the Grimmenstein was razed and John Frederick surrendered in April of that year.