4 Mariengroschen - Charles I

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.