Thaler - John Frederick II, John William and John Frederick III

John Frederick II inherited nothing in 1551 — technically. His father, John Frederick I, had lost the Saxon electorate to the Albertine branch after the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547, defeated and captured by Charles V largely for his stubborn loyalty to the Protestant cause. The three brothers struck coins jointly under the Ernestinian name, but their actual territorial authority was the rump duchy of Thuringia, not the electorate the obverse titulature still claimed. The persistence of electoral styling on these issues was deliberate political defiance, not administrative carelessness.