06/19/2026
Today is International Reformation Coins and Medals Day! To celebrate, we'd like to highlight the rare coins and medals in the CHI collection.
Concordia Historical Institute houses an extensive collection of Reformation commemorative coins and medals. Reformation and Luther coins and medals are a historically popular sub-field of numismatics (the study of coins), providing a helpful link to the ways people of the past thought about and remembered the Reformation. These mementos are not meant to commemorate Luther as a folk-hero, nor are they meant to represent the Reformation as a triumph of reason or individualism, as much other art representing Luther and the Reformation unfortunately does. Rather, these coins were made, by and large, by Lutherans who wished to make physical, artistic representations of their faith. These are “models” of their creators’ beliefs about the redeeming life and work of Christ Jesus and the ways God used history and a German man named Martin Luther to bring about the re-discovery of His freeing Gospel.
The coin and medal collection at CHI predates the actual Institute. When Concordia Historical Institute was incorporated in 1927, there was already a collection of coins and medals that had been given to the Synod. In November 1950, Oak Park druggist and CHI Board of Governors member Edwin Theodore Schumm donated over 325 Reformation coins and medals of museum-grade quality and historical significance. Rev. Dr. Theodore Conrad Graebner, co-founder and vice-president of CHI as well as a prolific writer and editor within the LCMS, gave a further 200+ pieces. Individual pieces and funding for a purchasing budget allowed the collection to continue to grow.
For several decades, the CHI Reformation Coin and Medal Collection fell out of public knowledge. In 2009, with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation just around the corner in 2017, CHI made plans to increase the visibility of its coin catalog. September 2013 saw a flurry of activity when Rev. Dr. Daniel Harmelink and Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Schumacher, visiting Reformation numismatists, with the help of then-CHI Associate Director Marvin Huggins, carefully weighed, measured, and photographed the collection. Dr. Harmelink, who became Executive Director of CHI in 2014, spent nearly a year updating the written catalog, which now appears in print as The Reformation Coin and Medal Collection of Concordia Historical Institute: A Striking Witness to Martin Luther and the Reformation (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016).
Numismatics—the study and collecting of coins and medals—may seem to many to be just another hobby. However, we at CHI believe that coins and medals are an important artistic medium through which our Lutheran forefathers proclaimed their witness to the love of Christ. Coins and medals combine image and text, literal messages and symbolism, all painstakingly cast into very valuable precious medals.
The care and creativity poured into each one of these objects reflects the seriousness with which these artists took their faith. They show great reverence to God and great respect for the individuals through whom God has chosen to work. By studying them, we can learn to treasure Christ and His work among us through history all the more.
You can view a selection of the CHI Reformation Coins and Medals collection on display in our upcoming exhibit, which open next week! Learn more and plan your visit today here: https://concordiahistoricalinstitute.org/chi-announces-reformation-coins-and-medals-exhibit/
Pictured below:
(1) Our published coins and medals catalogue: The Reformation Coin and Medal Collection of Concordia Historical Institute: A Striking Witness to Martin Luther and the Reformation, ed. Daniel N. Harmelink (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016).
(2) Dr. Harmelink before he was our Executive Director, when he came to catalog the coins and medals in our collection.
