2 Deutsche Mark Kurt Schumacher

Kurt Schumacher spent the Nazi years in concentration camps — Dachau among them — and emerged in 1945 to rebuild the SPD from near extinction, dying in office in 1952. His inclusion on this coin was politically pointed: the Federal Republic was, in part, asserting a democratic lineage that ran through resistance rather than collaboration.

The type ran across five mints simultaneously, producing an enormous combined mintage over its fourteen-year span. Proof sets from Hamburg and Munich in particular show significant variation in surface quality year to year.