3 Mark - Ernest Louis

Ernest Louis issued this three-mark piece to mark the tercentenary of the Ernestine line — or more precisely, the 1910 issue commemorates the 400th anniversary of the University of Giessen, founded in 1607 by Landgrave Ludwig V. Ernest Louis himself had a complicated relationship with German imperial politics, having been forced to abdicate in 1918 after backing the wrong factions one too many times.

Hesse-Darmstadt's commemorative coinage under the empire was tightly regulated by the 1871 imperial coinage law, which permitted German states to strike commemoratives only under specific petitions to Berlin.