3 Pfennig - Ernest III

Holstein-Schaumburg-Pinneberg was among the smallest and most financially precarious of the north German territories, and 1620 places this issue squarely within the Kipper- und Wipperzeit — the currency debasement crisis that swept the Holy Roman Empire in the early Thirty Years' War period. Minor counts and municipalities exploited the chaos to mint underweight or debased small change, often in volumes far exceeding their monetary authority. Ernest III was working within that same environment, producing copper pfennig coinage for a county whose political existence was already precarious; the line would die out entirely in 1640.