Denier Bracteate Ravensburg mint

Ravensburg passed to the Welfs under Henry the Lion, and following his defeat and exile by Frederick Barbarossa in 1180, the town came under Hohenstaufen control. These bracteates were struck during precisely that transitional consolidation, when the mint's output served as much to assert territorial authority as to facilitate trade. The single-sided fabric — hammered so thin the design punches through to ghost on the reverse — was a minting convention common to southern German and Swiss issues of the period rather than a technical limitation.