Picture on the 50 - Pfennig - coin
Years 1949 / 1950 and from 1966 - 2001 available on request.
Gerda Jo Werner on the back of the 50 - Pfennig - coin
The well-known image of the tree planter was created in 1949, following the currency reform in 1948, by Gerda Jo Werner's husband for a design competition organized by the then responsible board of directors of the Bank deutscher Länder (later: Deutsche Bundesbank). A motif was sought for the 50 pfennig coins that would embody the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War. In order to be able to participate in this call for tenders, Richard M. Werner took an existing series of nude drawings that he had made of his wife, and without further ado supplemented the depictions with veiled cloths and the oak seedling in her hands. The shadow-forming contours of the originally drawn body parts, which are typical of the original graphic, are still very well preserved on the later minting and thus almost give the impression of translucent clothing.
Werner's design by the young oak planter was immediately convincing and was selected unanimously. According to his own statement, he wanted to honour the countless women from the rubble, but also the numerous tree planters, also called "culture women", who are active in reforestation. By choosing the simple painting based on the model of his wife who was pregnant at the time, all these women were symbolically given what is probably the greatest monument to them to this day, at least in terms of numbers.[3]
Richard Martin Werner died shortly after the first coins with the image of his wife were minted. For a long time it was not known who "the 50 penny woman" was, she was generally considered to be an idealistic representation.[4] At the end of the 1980s, a journalist researched the subject. She was then interviewed by Frank Elstner in 1987 on the ZDF programme "Menschen".[5] Only then did the connection become known nationwide. Subsequently, Ms. Werner appeared in other television programs and was frequently interviewed, especially on the introduction of the Euro or the "Farewell to the D-Mark". She expressed her modest pleasure and gratitude about her late popularity.
From the end of the 1990s onwards, Hesse in particular launched several 50-Pfennig collection campaigns, some local, some developmental and some international, which financed the planting of trees in memory of the reconstruction women and also in honour of Gerda Jo Werner from an environmental point of view.[6][7]
From the first issue on 14 February 1949 until the introduction of the euro on 1 January 2002, the 50 pfennig coins were official currency in the Federal Republic of Germany. A total of well over 2 billion pieces were minted. The 50 pfennig coin was considered the most popular of all DM coins in circulation.[8] It is also the only one in the Federal Republic of Germany on which a woman is depicted.
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