50 Pfennig, Stadt Preetz, 1921 (town panorama)
Notgeld der Stadt Preetz in Holstein
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00203
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- Signatures
- This issue carries no bank manager or cashier signature.
- Grade
- UNC (IBNS)
As issued; bright colour, sharp corners. Estimated from the archival scan. Folds, soiling and edge condition are visible at this resolution; paper crispness, pinholes, small repairs and pressing are not.
- Estimated value
- $10 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 109 × 70.1 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinHolsteinWeimar RepublicTown view
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Preetz, 1921 (town panorama)
- Printer
- Not established
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
50 Preetzer Notgeld.
Fifty pfennig of Preetz emergency money.
Notgeld der Stadt Preetz in Holstein. Fuenf-zig Pfennig. Preetz, April 1921. Der Magistrat.
Emergency money of the town of Preetz in Holstein. Fifty pfennig. Preetz, April 1921. The town council.
Symbology
- Town panorama
- The pictorial face of this sheet: a distant view over the Kirchsee valley to Preetz on the skyline. Each note in the set carries a different local view - the picture is the point, not the denomination.
- Artist's signature (O. Kahler)
- Signed in the plate at the lower right of the landscape. The six scenes of the Preetz set were drawn by more than one hand; this one is Kahler's, which is what distinguishes it from its sister notes.
- Seal device and "50"
- The reverse pairs the large denomination with a red seal-like roundel and the town name in blackletter - decorative rather than a security feature.
- Expiry wording
- Like almost every Serienschein it states that it lapses a month after being called in - emergency money designed from the outset to stop being money.
What was happening
Notgeld - "emergency money". German towns, districts and firms began printing their own small change in 1914, when metal coin vanished into hoards, and did not really stop until the 1923 stabilisation.
What began as necessity became a craze. By 1921 municipalities were commissioning Serienscheine: beautifully lithographed series aimed squarely at collectors, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with local legends, landmarks and jokes in dialect. Selling them to collectors was itself a way of raising money - the town took real marks for paper it hoped would never be redeemed.
Preetz, a small Holstein town east of Kiel grown up around a Benedictine nunnery, issued a set of six 50-Pfennig notes in April 1921, each carrying a different view of the place. This one is the wide landscape of the set: a panorama across the fields and woods of the Kirchsee valley to the roofs of Preetz on the horizon, drawn in flat greens and reds and signed in the plate by the artist O. Kahler. The reverse is a large "50" with a red seal-like device, the town's name and the denomination spelled out, and the usual clause that the note lapses once the town calls it in.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Preetz, 1921 (town panorama) in the collection.
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