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4 Mariengroschen - Charles I
| Issuer | Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Principality of |
|---|---|
| Year | 1735-1780 |
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| Orientation | Medal alignment ↑↑ |
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|---|---|
| Obverse script | Latin |
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| Reverse description | The reverse presents a full-length standing figure of a wild man (Wilder Mann), the traditional heraldic supporter of Brunswick, depicted bearded and clad only in a leafy skirt, holding an uprooted pine tree over his right shoulder and resting his left hand on his hip. The numeral 4 appears to the left of the figure in the field. The encircling legend NVNQVAM RETRORSVM, the motto of the House of Brunswick meaning 'Never Backwards', runs around the upper portion of the coin within a reeded border. The figure stands on a simple ground line, rendered in a bold, robust engraving style characteristic of 18th-century German minor coinage. |
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| Additional information |
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel's 4 Mariengroschen denomination survived well into the eighteenth century largely through institutional inertia — the Mariengroschen itself was a regional accounting unit with roots in fourteenth-century Lower Saxony, named for the Virgin Mary imagery common on earlier issues. By Charles I's reign the denomination had outlived its commercial logic but remained embedded in local wage and tax calculations, which kept it in production across four and a half decades despite broader German monetary standardization efforts.
Charles I ruled Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel from 1735 until his death in 1780, the span precisely mirrored by this type's production run.