5 Mark Ernst Barlach

Issued by East Germany to mark the centenary of Ernst Barlach's birth, this coin arrived at a politically awkward moment. Barlach had been declared a "degenerate artist" by the Nazi regime in the 1930s — his war memorial sculptures were removed, his work confiscated — and the GDR's rehabilitation of him as an antifascist cultural hero carried obvious ideological utility, however genuine the artistic admiration behind it.

The Berlin mint struck this in copper-nickel during the DDR's final years, when commemorative five-mark pieces were being issued at a pace that outstripped collector appetite.