5 Mark Goethe's Weimar Cottage

Issued by East Germany to mark the 150th anniversary of Goethe's death, this coin commemorates not the poet himself but the modest garden house on the Ilm river in Weimar where he lived for six years before Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst von Schiller persuaded the Duke to grant him the larger residence on the Frauenplan. The Gartenhaus remains the oldest surviving structure associated with Goethe and is now maintained by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar.

The GDR made pointed use of Goethe as a cultural symbol — Weimar fell within its borders, and the regime invested heavily in presenting itself as the legitimate heir to German classical heritage.