48 Kreuzers - Henry Wenceslaus and Charles Frederick I

This coin belongs to the Kipper und Wipperzeit — the catastrophic currency debasement crisis that swept the Holy Roman Empire between roughly 1619 and 1623. Minor princes, imperial cities, and ecclesiastical lords alike exploited a gap in monetary oversight to mint vast quantities of heavily debased coinage, then rapidly exchanged it for full-weight currency before the scheme collapsed. Münsterberg-Oels was among the smaller Silesian duchies drawn into this spiral, jointly administered at the time by the brothers Henry Wenceslaus and Charles Frederick I.

The 48 Kreuzer denomination was itself a creature of the crisis — an artificial unit designed to extract maximum seigniorage.