1 Thaler Hanover Silver

1851, Hannover, Ernest August I. Silver Thaler “Mining” Coin.

Mint Year: 1851
References: KM-209.2.
Denomination: Thaler "Mining"

Weight: 16.82gm
Diameter: 33mm
Material: Silver

Obverse: “Small” head of Ernest August I right.

Legend: ERNST AUGUST KOENIG VON HANNOVER / B

Reverse: Crowned and foliaged coat-of-arms. Date (18-51) split by cross-order below.

Legend: EIN THALER XIV EINE F.M. / FEINES 18-51 SILBER / BERGSEGEN DES HARZES

The Kingdom of Hanover (German: Königreich Hannover) was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, with the restoration of George III to his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic era. It succeeded the former Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (known informally as the Electorate of Hanover), and joined 38 other sovereign states in the German Confederation in June 1815. The kingdom was ruled by the House of Hanover, a cadet branch of the House of Welf, in personal union with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until 1837. Since its monarch resided in London, a viceroy (usually a younger member of the British Royal Family) handled the administration of the Kingdom of Hanover. The personal union with the United Kingdom ended in 1837 upon the accession of Queen Victoria because females could not inherit the Hanoverian throne, so her uncle became the ruler of Hanover. Hanover backed the losing side in the Austro-Prussian War and was conquered by Prussia in 1866, subsequently becoming a Prussian province. Along with the rest of Prussia, Hanover became part of the German Empire upon unification in January 1871. Briefly revived as the State of Hanover in 1946, the state was subsequently merged with some smaller states to form the current state of Lower Saxony in West Germany, later Germany.

Ernest Augustus I (5 June 1771 – 18 November 1851) was king of Hanover from 1837, and from 1799 1st Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in the Peerage of Great Britain and 1st Earl of Armagh in the Peerage of Ireland. He was the fifth son and eighth child of King George III of the United Kingdom and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Ernest had a short military career, during which he received disfiguring wounds to the face. After the Napoleonic Wars ended, he married against the wishes of his mother, Queen Charlotte (his father was by then mad). After the death of Princess Charlotte of Wales in childbirth in 1817, there was some chance of Ernest, or at least his offspring, succeeding to the British throne, since he was the senior male who was both married and not estranged from his wife. However, both of his unmarried other brothers quickly married, and his next-older brother, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, would father the eventual heir, Princess Victoria of Kent.

Ernest had an unpleasant reputation, due to his appearance, and due to his extreme Toryism and to persistent rumours (reputedly spread by his political foes) that he had murdered his valet and had fathered a son by his sister. In spite of these disabilities, he was constant in attendance in the House of Lords and was of considerable influence there.

Upon the death of his older brother William IV on 20 June 1837, he ascended the Hanoverian throne as senior male heir because Queen Victoria could not inherit under Salic Law that governed in the Germanic states dating back to the Holy Roman Empire. As Hanover’s first monarch to reside in the Kingdom since George I, he had a generally successful fourteen-year reign, though he excited controversy when he dismissed the Gottingen Seven, professors who protested against his policies, from their positions.