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The article reports on a June 2010 conference in Wiesloch, Germany, of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Among the topics discussed at the meeting were silver mining in Wiesloch during the High Middle Ages, medieval coin manufacturing, and the extraction of heavy metal ores in the region from Roman times to 1954.

The article compares different means of representing the images of rulers on coins during the early Middle Ages. The author relates the use of such royal images as a form of propaganda that is reflective of theological debates on the propriety of visual representations exemplified by the Byzantine controversy over Islam's prohibition on figurative imagery. Transcultural comparisons are made among sources from Byzantium, the Latin West, and the 7th and 8th century Muslim caliphates of the Umayyads and the Abbasids.