Pfennig 'Vierzipfliger'

The "Vierzipfliger" — named for its characteristic four-pointed flan shape produced by cutting square blanks and striking them unevenly — belongs to the bracteate-adjacent tradition of the Upper Rhine, where competing ecclesiastical and secular mints produced an extraordinary diversity of thin silver pfennigs within a remarkably compressed geography. The Counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg represent a collateral branch that diverged from the main Habsburg line following the division of Rudolf II's inheritance in 1232, giving this issue a historically brief window of autonomous minting before the line's eventual absorption.