Eagle above denomination, date at left.

Mythic figure with book left, dates divided above. Allegory based on of Grimmelshausen’s book Simplicius Simplicissimus, the greatest German novel from the 17th century.

Simplicius Simplicissimus (German: Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch) is a picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in 1668 and probably published the same year (although bearing the date 1669). Inspired by the events and horrors of the Thirty Years' War which devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language and the first German novel masterpiece.

The novel is told from the perspective of its protagonist Simplicius, a rogue or picaro typical of the picaresque novel, as he traverses the tumultuous world of the Holy Roman Empire during the 30 Years War. Raised by a peasant family, he is separated from his home by foraging dragoons and is adopted by a hermit living in the forest, who teaches him to read and introduces him to religion. The hermit also gives Simplicius his name because he was so simple that he did not know what his own name was. After the death of the hermit, Simplicius must fend for himself. He is conscripted at a young age into service, and from there embarks on years of foraging, military triumph, wealth, prostitution, disease, bourgeois domestic life, and travels to Russia, France, and to an alternate world inhabited by mermen.

Smooth with inscriptions of a part of the novel title "Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch"