Thaler

Bern struck thalers under its own civic authority throughout the seventeenth century, a privilege jealously guarded by the Swiss city-states against the encroachments of the Holy Roman Emperor's monetary ordinances. This issue spans the years of the Fronde in France and the final territorial settlements following Westphalia — a period when Bern's political autonomy, freshly reinforced by the Peace of 1648's explicit recognition of Swiss independence from imperial jurisdiction, translated directly into confident, uninterrupted civic minting.

HMZ 1#2-190b places this among a small cluster of die-linked variants within the KM#37 type, distinguished by subtle differences in the shield rendering.