File:Ilmenauer Kupfer und Silberbergwerk Kuxschein 1784.jpg

English: Mining share certificate of the Ilmenau Kupfer- und Silber-Bergwerk for 20 Thaler, issued on 24 February 1784 in Weimar, signed in the original by the poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe, also by the minister Christian Gottlob Voigt and by the German mineralogist and mining engineer Johann Karl Wilhelm Voigt. At the age of only 26, the poet Goethe received an invitation from Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, for whom he assumed ministerial duties. He administered finances, the military and mining. Goethe sought to reopen the Ilmenau copper and silver mine in order to balance the state budget, which was heavily in debt. The copper and silver mine was opened on 24 February 1784. A water inrush put an abrupt end to the mine in 1812.