Hohnstein's bracteate issues of this period fall within the dense cluster of ecclesiastical and secular penny coinages that proliferated across the Saxon-Thuringian region following the fragmentation of Lothar III's ducal authority. Elgerus III — Count of Hohnstein during the late Staufen period — issued these thin, single-sided coins at a moment when dozens of minor lords exercised freshly asserted minting rights, many of them legally dubious.
The bracteate fabric itself, hammered so thin as to be structurally fragile, means attrition among surviving examples is severe. Berger's numbering places this type within a tight regional sequence that helps establish the chronology of Hohnstein's mint activity.
Hohnstein's bracteate issues of this period fall within the dense cluster of ecclesiastical and secular penny coinages that proliferated across the Saxon-Thuringian region following the fragmentation of Lothar III's ducal authority. Elgerus III — Count of Hohnstein during the late Staufen period — issued these thin, single-sided coins at a moment when dozens of minor lords exercised freshly asserted minting rights, many of them legally dubious.
The bracteate fabric itself, hammered so thin as to be structurally fragile, means attrition among surviving examples is severe. Berger's numbering places this type within a tight regional sequence that helps establish the chronology of Hohnstein's mint activity.