Germany began minting a Silver 5 Marks commemorative series in 1952. This continued until 1979 when the coin started to be minted in Copper-Nickel. The Commemoratives switched to Silver again in 1986, but now in the 10 Marks. The reason I wanted to gather a few of these was not the subject matter, which always seemed to be the 125th or 375th or 500th anniversary of someones birth or death, but because everyone of them has a different eagle design. I found that fascinating and interesting. The coins are high mintage, usually 2 to 8,000,000 and low, 0.2250 ASW. This means they are not only available but inexpensive. However even in un-circulated, they don't seem to weather very well. Probably due to low Silver content. You just have to gloss over that. Or don't look too closely. I think the most I paid for any one coin was about $9. I counten 31 coins in the silver and about 14 in Copper-Nickel so this would not be a hard series to complete. The 10 Marks are even more fascinating in that the style of the eagle appears to match the style of the subject. I intend to grab a few of those in the near future to compliment the 5 marks. Here are the eagles, not in any particular order. Followed by the matching Subject. Which is your favorite?
I like all of them. The design of the eagles with the tongue sticking out is known as a Heraldic Eagle design -
They all look good. Not any of the old German Empire eagles? Or the nazi ones? I know a lot of people don't support that but I like them for the historical reasons.
Guess that the eagles of the German Empire would be the ones that Americans will be familiar with. So for people outside Europe it may be interesting to see some of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949-today). Not that I like all of our eagle designs, but it sure is interesting what the designers come up with. The Polish and the German eagle look quite similar, by the way, but of you look at modern coins from Poland, you will notice that they all use the same eagle design. In Germany certain design elements are required but the actual depiction may and does vary. In some cases the eagle design has a particular meaning: The "fat eagle" of the 1974 piece (25 years of the constitution) is the one that was in the plenary hall of the Bundestag in Bonn. The Kopernikus eagle, so to say, reminds of a globe, and there are other examples. As for the silver content, it was Ag625 for the circulating and commemorative 5 DEM coins and the 10 DEM collector coins until 1997. The later 10 mark coins, and the €10 pieces until 2010, were Ag925. Christian
Well, that is a Deutsches Reich eagle (including the crown and the small Prussian eagle), not one from my country. But if you like it, good. Christian
I think they all have their merits. Here is another that is not among those posted above in the original post. However, this one is on a 10 mark, so maybe it was never used on the 5M.
Don't think it was used before - in fact, with very few exceptions, each "commem eagle" is unique. Some artists have a "preferred" eagle style that they use, with minor variations, again and again - Dietrich Dorfstecher was one of them, and Christian Höpfner is a similar case. But usually the designers try to come up with something original. The result is OK in some cases, ho-hum in others, and sometimes horrible. This is the eagle on the 2008 Gorch Fock coin; could have been bigger. And here is the 2011 automobile piece; an eagle with wheels instead of wings? Christian
Great coin; I just wrote a comment here. Note however that this is not actually a "German" eagle but the CoA of the city of Frankfurt. In the years of the Holy Roman Empire, several free cities (ie. places that had no ruler except the emperor "above" them) expressed this independence by using the imperial eagle. Aachen, Lübeck, Nürnberg and some other places still have the eagle, with or without crown, with a single or double head, in their CoA. Christian
The 1979 5 mark second coin on the second row is the style I love on these German Eagles. I pretty much love all these designs and I just about have them all in my personal collection. Nice coins. Now I want to go and look at my coins. LOL.
