Denier Bracteate - Bernhard III

Bernhard III inherited the Duchy of Saxony in 1180 only because Henry the Lion had been stripped of his territories by Frederick Barbarossa — the duchy itself was a political remnant, carved down and redistributed after one of the most consequential princely forfeitures of the medieval German realm. Bracteates of this period are structurally fragile by nature: struck on a single thin flan with a single die, they survive intact far less often than double-sided coinage of comparable age.

Berger 1823 is among the thinner-documented types in the Saxon bracteate sequence.