Pfennig - Frederick III

Frederick III (known as Frederick the Fair) struck these small deniers during a period when he was simultaneously Duke of Austria and a claimant to the Holy Roman imperial throne, fighting a prolonged civil war against Louis IV of Bavaria that lasted from 1314 until Frederick's capture at the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322. The Viennese pfennig coinage of this period was minted under considerable fiscal strain — war finance depended heavily on it.

After Mühldorf, Frederick was imprisoned at Trausnitz Castle for three years before an unusual dual-kingship arrangement was negotiated in 1325, a settlement with virtually no parallel in medieval German constitutional history.