Groschen - Albert of Brandenburg Breitgroschen

Albert of Brandenburg held the Archbishopric of Mainz, the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, and the Bishopric of Halberstadt simultaneously — a concentration of ecclesiastical power that required papal dispensation and an enormous bribe to Rome, financed partly through the sale of indulgences in his territories. It was specifically this arrangement that provoked Martin Luther to publish his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, making Albert an unwitting catalyst of the Reformation. This coin was struck just five years later, when that rupture was already irreversible.