Bluzger - Julius Otto

Haldenstein was among the smallest sovereign entities in the old Swiss Confederation, a lordship of barely a few square kilometers in the Rhine valley near Chur. Julius Otto, who held the lordship across much of the seventeenth century, exercised mint rights that were perpetually contested — the Graubünden league repeatedly challenged whether petty lords of his standing retained legitimate coinage authority. The bluzger itself was a debased small change denomination common to the Alemannic monetary sphere, worth a fraction of a kreuzer and almost entirely a convenience issue for local market transactions.