4 Pfennig

Osnabrück's copper small-denomination coinage of the late sixteenth century emerged from a city perpetually caught between its Catholic bishop and its increasingly Lutheran civic administration. By 1599, that tension was sharpening toward what would eventually require resolution at the Peace of Westphalia — signed in Osnabrück itself in 1648. The city's right to strike its own copper pfennig coinage was a jealously maintained civic privilege, separate from the episcopal mint authority.

Kennepohl's cataloguing of this type identified distinct die variations across the 1590s issues.