Angster

The Angster was a small fractional denomination struck across the Upper Rhine region by numerous petty lords during the early fifteenth century, its name likely deriving from the Latin angustus — narrow or thin. The Counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg, a collateral line of the main Habsburg dynasty, had by this period already ceded much of their territorial power to the senior Austrian branch, yet retained mint rights at Laufenburg on the Rhine as one of their last meaningful expressions of independent lordship.

The line itself died out in 1408 with the death of Count Rudolf IV, making issues attributable to the final years of this series products of administrative continuation rather than active comital authority.