3 Pfennig - Christian William of Brandenburg

Magdeburg's coinage of 1622 falls squarely within the Kipper und Wipper crisis, the most destructive currency debasement in the Holy Roman Empire before the twentieth century. Mints across the Empire — including ecclesiastical ones like Magdeburg — competed to produce debased small coinage, collect sound money in return, and pass the losses down the chain. Christian William had already been entangled in the political fallout of the early Thirty Years' War, and his administration of the archbishopric would end badly: he was deposed by the Emperor in 1625 and later captured at the siege that culminated in Magdeburg's catastrophic sack of 1631.