25 Pfennig, District of Coesfeld, 1918
Kriegsgeld des Kreises Coesfeld
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00340
- Series year
- 1918
- Actually issued
- 1918
- district_committee_1
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- district_committee_2
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- district_committee_3
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- XF (IBNS)
Printed on coarse grey war stock, which is the paper as issued rather than a defect; light corner wear and a pencilled price in the upper left margin. 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
- 96.1 × 68.5 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyKriegsnotgeldWestphaliaDistrict issueFirst World War
The type
- Type
- 25 Pfennig, District of Coesfeld, 1918
- Printer
- Lad. Schwarz, Lindenberg im Allgaeu; the design is signed Heinz and Schiestl
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Kreis Coesfeld. 25 Pfennig. Giltig fuer den Geldverkehr innerhalb des Kreises. Der Gutschein verliert seine Gueltigkeit drei Monate nach erfolgter Bekanntmachung. Der Kreisausschuss.
District of Coesfeld. 25 pfennig. Valid for monetary transactions within the district. The voucher loses its validity three months after the announcement is made. The district committee.
Symbology
- The man with the scythe
- A Westphalian farmer, broad in the shoulder, scythe carried across the back, printed reserved out of a near-black oval. The Muensterland fed the Ruhr, and in the last year of the war that was the district's entire claim on the country's attention.
- A dotted halo
- The figure stands inside a ring of dots on a black ground, the composition of a saint's medallion applied to a labourer. Wartime Notgeld does this repeatedly - the visual language of devotion, borrowed for work.
- Three months after the announcement
- Expiry counted from a future notice rather than a fixed date: the district kept the right to decide when its own money died.
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.
Coesfeld is a district in the Muensterland, flat farming country in western Westphalia. Its war money is district-wide, numbered, and expires three months after the redemption call - signed by the district committee rather than a mayor.
The face carries a single figure on a dark ground: a heavy-set countryman in a broad hat with a scythe over his shoulder, drawn by Heinz and Schiestl in the same hand that signed Hammelburg's notes. He is not decoration. In 1918 the Muensterland's value to Germany was what it could grow, and the district put the man who grew it on its money.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, District of Coesfeld, 1918 in the collection.
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