Albums / Germany — Notgeld
Germany — Notgeld
Emergency money printed by German towns, districts and states between 1914 and 1923 — from the plain war scrip of 1918 to the lithographed Serienscheine that towns sold to collectors once the shortage was over.
478 notes · 1917–1923
50 Pfennig, Bad Albersdorf, 1921
039400 · OM-00630 · XF
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00630
- Serial
- 039400
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- Signatures
- No bank officer signature on this issue.
- Grade
- XF (IBNS)
- Estimated value
- $5.5indicative
- Dimensions
- 100 × 64.3 mm (±0.5)
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Bad Albersdorf, 1921
- Printer
- Louis Koch, Halberstadt
- Rarity
- common
- Themes
- Notgeld Schleswig-Holstein Dithmarschen Megaliths Spa Weimar Republic
Symbology
- A megalithic dolmen as altar
- A Dithmarschen Stone Age tomb reimagined as an ancient Germanic sacrificial altar - prehistory pressed into patriotic service.
What was happening
By 1920 German Notgeld had stopped being a response to a coin shortage and become a collector's product. Towns, districts and firms commissioned decorative Serienscheine - lithographed sets printed far beyond any local need and sold to collectors, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of: a legend, a famous son, a battle, a trade, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made in the years when Germany's currency was dying.
Albersdorf, a health resort in Dithmarschen in western Holstein, sits in a landscape unusually rich in Neolithic megalithic tombs - the Dithmarschen "Huenengraeber," of which the Brutkamp dolmen nearby is the best known. The note turns one of them into an Altgermanischer Opferaltar, an "ancient Germanic sacrificial altar," the sort of prehistoric-national imagery that German Notgeld reached for again and again. Printed by Louis Koch of Halberstadt, serial 039400.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Bad Albersdorf, 1921 in the collection.