What's up fellow plebs?
After a short break from posting I return with yet another silver piece from Germany. I know I know, you love them :p
So, once again we have a commemorative 10 mark, this time featuring some old bald dude with glasses:
Who is no other than
.
..
...
Robert Koch!
Chances are you have heard of the fella before since he is considered to be kind of a big deal in science!
Long story short, he was a German physician and one of the founding fathers of bacteriology, the study of bacteria. Robert Koch (11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) made tons of revolutionary contributions in the field with the major ones being the following:
- Discovered the cause of anthrax
- Identified the tuberculosis bacterium
- Discovered the cause of cholera
As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax, he is regarded as one of the main founders of modern bacteriology. As such he is popularly nicknamed the father of microbiology (with Louis Pasteur), and as the father of medical bacteriology. source
For his groundbreaking discoveries related to tuberculosis he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
So yeah, that is the super short version of his life. His contributions and discoveries are just too many to be summarized in a few words, so I will leave you with this link to Wikipedia in case you'd like to learn more on him. One thing is for sure. This guy definitely deserved to be on a coin :)
Fyi, the coin was minted in 1993 to commemorate the 150th year since his birth.
Ok, I believe we got this side covered. Now let's flip the coin!
Nothing out of the ordinary here. As always, we get a unique design of the imperial eagle. This one is more on the chubby side 😄
We also have the denomination, minting date and in German the text "Federal Republic of Germany".
Ok, now let's move to the engraved edge!
The text here reads
MITBEGRÜNDER DER BAKTERIOLOGIE
For
Co-founder of bacteriology
Pretty self explanatory considering he is considered one of the founding fathers of the field. The other ones being Louis Pasteur and Ferdinand Cohn.
When it comes to composition we have the usual 0.625 purity with a total weight of 15.5 g. That's a pure silver weight of 9.68 g.
As we speak, silver has reached $1.01 per gram, wooooohooooo! This gives us a melting value of about 9.8 $. Nice! Very nice. Hopefully the pump has only begun 🙂
Here are some more boring semantics from Numista for anyone interested:
Issuer: Federal Republic of Germany
Period: Federal Republic (1949-date)
Type: Non-circulating coin
Year: 1993
Value: 10 Deutsche Mark (10 DEM)
Currency: Deutsche Mark (1948-2001)
Composition: Silver (.625)
Weight: 15.5 g
Diameter: 32.5 mm
Thickness: 2.25 mm
Shape: Round
Technique: Milled
Orientation: Medal alignment ↑↑
Demonetized: 31 December 2001
Ok plebs, I think this concludes today's post.
As you know I love my German coins and this is for sure one of my favorites as I am a huge fan boy of Robert Koch :)
As always, see you soon with more silver ❤️
Stack on!