5 Pfennige - Frederick William

Mecklenburg-Strelitz was among the smallest and least economically significant of the German states, yet it retained the right to strike its own coinage until the monetary unification that followed the Franco-Prussian War. This 1872 issue appeared just as the new German Empire was consolidating currency standards under the Mark system — making it one of the final gestures of numismatic autonomy from a duchy whose entire population barely exceeded 100,000.