Rostock struck these copper pfennigs under the terms of the 1857 Vienna Monetary Treaty, which attempted to harmonize coinage across the German states by establishing the Vereinsthaler as a common standard. The city retained minting rights as a free Hanseatic city, though that independence was increasingly nominal by the 1860s — North German political consolidation under Prussian pressure was already making municipal coinage an anachronism. This issue was among Rostock's last before absorption into the North German Confederation rendered local pfennig coinage obsolete.
Rostock struck these copper pfennigs under the terms of the 1857 Vienna Monetary Treaty, which attempted to harmonize coinage across the German states by establishing the Vereinsthaler as a common standard. The city retained minting rights as a free Hanseatic city, though that independence was increasingly nominal by the 1860s — North German political consolidation under Prussian pressure was already making municipal coinage an anachronism. This issue was among Rostock's last before absorption into the North German Confederation rendered local pfennig coinage obsolete.