Denier Bracteate - Henry VI Altenburg

Henry VI inherited the imperial throne in 1190 and spent much of his reign forcibly annexing the Kingdom of Sicily — a campaign financed partly through aggressive exploitation of Saxon and Thuringian minting rights. Altenburg, as an imperial residence city with its own mint, issued bracteates under direct crown authority during exactly this period of fiscal pressure. The thin, single-sided fabric of the bracteate format was a regional German convention by this point, but the large diameter relative to the negligible weight made these coins extraordinarily fragile in circulation, and surviving examples without cracks or splits are genuinely uncommon.