⅔ Thaler - August Frederick

August Frederick held the Bishopric of Lübeck as a Protestant administrator — the see had been secularized under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, leaving it governed by a succession of Holstein-Gottorp princes rather than Catholic clergy. The ⅔ Thaler denomination was a creature of the Reichsmünzfuß debates of the late seventeenth century, a north German convention that attempted to rationalize silver coinage against the species thaler standard. The two-year window of this issue, 1689–1690, coincides almost exactly with the outbreak of the Nine Years' War, when bullion flows across the Holy Roman Empire were already under strain.