⅔ Thaler - Frederick August

Anhalt-Zerbst is remembered today almost exclusively as the birthplace of Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, who left the principality in 1744 to become Catherine the Great of Russia. By 1763, the principality's ruler Frederick August was presiding over a territory so financially exhausted by the Seven Years' War that coinage of any ambition was a statement of recovery rather than routine production. The ⅔ Thaler denomination — a north German convention tied to the Leipzig monetary standard — saw heavy use in the postwar settlement period precisely because cross-border commerce demanded recognizable, standardized silver.

Frederick August died in 1793 without a male heir, and Anhalt-Zerbst was partitioned and absorbed. Coins from his reign constitute the entire numismatic output of a dynasty that simply ceased to exist.