4 Schilling - Frederick IV

Holstein-Gottorp occupied an awkward political position throughout the late seventeenth century — nominally under Danish suzerainty for some territories while maintaining close dynastic ties to Sweden, a tension that repeatedly dragged the duchy into larger Northern European conflicts. Frederick IV, who ruled Gottorp from 1694, pursued an aggressively pro-Swedish foreign policy that ultimately cost him everything: Danish forces occupied his Holstein territories in 1702, the same year this issue ceased, and he died at the Battle of Klissow that June fighting under Charles XII.

The coinage of this period was minted at Tondern.