6 Pfennig

Dortmund held the status of a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, a designation that granted it the right to strike its own coinage — a privilege it exercised jealously even as its actual political and economic influence was declining sharply through the seventeenth century. By the 1650s, the city was deeply indebted and shrinking in regional significance, yet continued issuing small silver denominations partly as a matter of civic identity. The thirty-year production window for this type suggests die reuse rather than consistent reminting.