Why Didn't Portrait Of Adolf Hitler Appear On Nazi Official Coins ?

I believe it had something to do with a superstition that Hitler believed.

Edit: I just did some Googling and couldn't find any information to back that up.

He was a shy, reserved kind of guy.

I don't think there is a single definitive answer - after some googling, I have read claims that 1) He claimed he wouldn't accept that honor until his war was finished, and 2) From a propaganda standpoint, the Third Reich was about the advancement of the "Aryan" race, not a personality cult.

Neither of those really explain why Hindenburg was on most of their silver coins, though.

@finn235, I think we were posting at the same time.

Those Hindenburg coins are probably best compared to something like the Roosevelt dime or Kennedy half. Issued shortly after the death, not while in office.

There was also a design competition that led to the production of a 1942 dated pattern 5 Reichsmark bearing Hitler's likeness. Why this was never produced probably owes something to the general European convention was that a portrait on a coin is that of the reigning monarch. Putting his megalomania on the shelf in this one instance, I think Hitler rightly perceived that being presented in such a manner would rather suggest he was more or less "Wilhelm III" which would run counter to both his personal loathing of royalty as an institution as well as the propaganda that promoted his "man of the people" image.

to the Community!

Thought it had to do with Adolp and his belief in the occult, coins were issued posthoumsly, he feared death greatly.

It is my understanding - and I cannot cite any reference as to where I heard this - that while it is difficult to get into Hitler's mind, Hitler's thinking went something like this.

Only monarchs put their portrait on coins. But the Holy Roman Empire (the First Reich) and the German monarchy (the Second Reich) were failures - they both failed to bring the German people into their manifest destiny of world domination. He, and his Third Reich, would succeed where the emperors of the past had failed.

But until that day, when German hegemony became a reality and Germany actually won a war, Hitler would never place himself on a level with the kings of old - either by formally claiming an imperial title for himself, or by behaving as a king (such as putting his portrait on the coinage).

There is a very rare Vichy French coin, the five francs of 1941. It bears the portrait of the Nazi puppet, the Vichy French ruler Field Marshal Petain. It is said (and again, I cannot cite a source) that Hitler was personally incensed that his French puppet put his portrait on French coins, before Hitler himself was ready to do likewise. So he ordered the French to withdraw and destroy the coins. Hence, their current rarity.

I do not know how true this is, especially in the light of the Slovakian puppet coinage from 1939 depicting the Slovak leader, Jozef Tiso.