Batzen - Johann Konrad II von Reinach-Hirzbach

Johann Konrad II von Reinach-Hirzbach served as Prince-Bishop of Basel from 1705 until his death in 1737, presiding over a diocese whose temporal authority was increasingly hemmed in by the surrounding Swiss cantons. The Bishopric's mint at Porrentruy — Pruntrut in German — was one of the last ecclesiastical mints in the region still producing subsidiary coinage into the eighteenth century, a stubborn assertion of jurisdictional independence that the canton of Bern in particular found irritating.

The batzen denomination had been a workhorse of small trade across the Upper Rhine for over two centuries by this point, its purchasing power long since eroded from the original four-kreuzer standard.