1 Mark Käthe Kollwitz, Probe

This 1967 probe — an official test strike, not a circulating issue — was produced as part of the DDR's ongoing program to evaluate new portrait subjects for everyday coinage. Käthe Kollwitz, the Berlin-born graphic artist and sculptor whose work centered on working-class suffering, was an ideologically convenient choice for the SED government: her socialist sympathies and anti-war activism made her an acceptable figure despite her bourgeois origins. The design was ultimately rejected for the 1 Mark denomination.

A Kollwitz 5 Mark commemorative did eventually appear in 1967, the same year as this probe, marking the centenary of her birth.