Heller

Aachen's status as a Free Imperial City made it one of the few municipalities with the right to strike its own coinage, a privilege jealously guarded and periodically contested by neighboring territorial lords throughout the fifteenth century. The heller denomination itself originated in Schwäbisch Hall, spreading across the Holy Roman Empire as a low-value unit so ubiquitous that counterfeiting it was endemic — a persistent problem that drove repeated imperial edicts on fineness standards. By 1420, Aachen's issues were circulating well beyond municipal boundaries into the Rhineland trade networks.