2 Reichsmark Friedrich Schiller

Issued to mark the 175th anniversary of Schiller's birth, this coin appeared in 1934 — the year the Weimar Republic's last institutions were being dismantled and Hitler consolidated the presidency and chancellorship into a single office following Hindenburg's death. The regime's appropriation of Schiller's image was not without irony: his plays, particularly Wilhelm Tell, were sufficiently subversive that the Nazis would ban it from German stages by 1941.

The .625 silver fineness was a deliberate reduction from Weimar-era coinage standards, reflecting the Reich's tightening control over precious metal reserves from the outset.