This piece belongs to the German federal commemorative program in which each of the sixteen Bundesländer receives a dedicated 2 Euro design — Hessen's turn came in 2009. The silver-plated version was issued alongside the circulation strike as a collector format, a practice the Bundesrepublik has used since the early 2000s to extract additional revenue from the commemorative series without altering the circulating coinage itself.
This piece belongs to the German federal commemorative program in which each of the sixteen Bundesländer receives a dedicated 2 Euro design — Hessen's turn came in 2009. The silver-plated version was issued alongside the circulation strike as a collector format, a practice the Bundesrepublik has used since the early 2000s to extract additional revenue from the commemorative series without altering the circulating coinage itself.