50 Pfennig, Stadt Bayreuth, 1918
Gutschein der Stadt Bayreuth ueber Fuenfzig Pfennig
Loading the detail view…
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · Esc to close
This copy
- Accession
- OM-00331
- Series year
- 1918
- Actually issued
- 1918
- town_magistrate
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- city_treasurer
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- XF (IBNS)
Light even toning and soft corners; a pencilled price in the upper left margin from an earlier owner. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which shows folds, soiling and edge condition but not paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
- Estimated value
- $5.5 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- at least 96.2 × 61.4 mm
(±1, from the scan)
The note is folded and runs to the edge of the scan, so this is a floor, not a measurement. A flat rescan with a margin would settle it.
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyFranconiaBavariaMusicFirst World War
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Bayreuth, 1918
- Printer
- Not established
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Stadt Bayreuth. Gutschein ueber Fuenfzig Pfennig. Stadtmagistrat. Bayreuth, 22. Oktober 1918. Stadtkaemmerer. Gueltig nur im Stadtbezirk Bayreuth. Nachahmung strafbar.
Town of Bayreuth. Voucher for fifty pfennig. Town magistrate. Bayreuth, 22 October 1918. Municipal treasurer. Valid only within the town district of Bayreuth. Counterfeiting punishable.
Symbology
- The Festspielhaus
- Wagner's festival theatre, opened in 1876 on the hill north of the town, drawn on the reverse with its gardens in front. Bayreuth had been a margravial residence and a provincial town; the Festspiele made it a destination, and the note says so.
- Valid only within the town district
- The limit that separates municipal scrip from money. It circulates where the issuer's word is good and nowhere else, which for a fifty-Pfennig note in 1918 was enough.
- 22 October 1918
- Dated three weeks before the armistice and less than three before the King of Bavaria fled Munich. The note outlived the kingdom whose name is on nothing about it.
What was happening
This is Kriegsnotgeld - war emergency money, not the collectors' Notgeld of 1920-21 that followed it. Within weeks of mobilisation in 1914 silver and nickel coin vanished from circulation into hoards, and the Reichsbank could not supply enough small notes to replace it. Towns, districts and firms filled the gap themselves, on their own authority, redeemable against their own treasuries.
These early issues look like what they are: functional paper, serially numbered, with a validity tied not to a date but to the end of a war nobody could date.
Bayreuth's fifty-Pfennig voucher is dated 22 October 1918 - three weeks before the armistice, in the last days of the monarchy that had paid for the town's fame. It is serially numbered, signed by the town magistrate and the municipal treasurer, and valid only within the town district.
The face is conventional: rose-pink guilloche, blackletter display, a formula. The reverse is not. It shows the Festspielhaus - the theatre Wagner built on the hill above the town in 1876 to stage the Ring, the only opera house in the world designed for one composer's work. Bayreuth put the building its whole modern identity rests on onto a fifty-pfennig note, in the month the state that subsidised it fell.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Bayreuth, 1918 in the collection.
Print an album label for this note →
← → to move between notes