25 Pfennig, Notgeld of Hammelburg, 1918
Notgeld der Stadt Hammelburg
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00341
- Series year
- 1918
- Actually issued
- 1918
- mayor
- Michelbach uncertain
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- board_of_the_municipal_collegium
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- UNC (IBNS)
As issued: full body, square corners, bright unfaded ink and no fold through the design. 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
- $10 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
- Dimensions
- 96.8 × 69.3 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyBavariaFranconiaPrinting historyFirst World War
The type
- Type
- 25 Pfennig, Notgeld of Hammelburg, 1918
- Portrait
- Johann Froben
- Printer
- Not established; the design is signed Heinz and Schiestl
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Stadt Hammelburg. Fuenfundzwanzig Pfennig. Gueltig bis zur Einloesung. Stadtmagistrat Hammelburg 1918.
Town of Hammelburg. Twenty-five pfennig. Valid until redemption. Town magistrate, Hammelburg, 1918.
Symbology
- Johann Froben
- Johann Froben (c. 1460–1527), born in Hammelburg, died in Basel. Printer to Erasmus, publisher of the 1516 Greek New Testament that Luther translated from, employer of Hans Holbein the Younger. The note reads BUCHDRUCKER JOHANN FROBEN GEB. HAMMELBURG - printer, born in Hammelburg - and claims him plainly.
- The caduceus
- Froben's printer's mark: a staff with two serpents and a pair of doves, from the motto about being wise as serpents and harmless as doves. It is reproduced in the left panel of the reverse as he used it on his title pages.
- The town above the Saale
- The face is a wide view of Hammelburg's roofs and towers with the river in front and vines on the slope behind - the same landscape as the ten-Pfennig note, taken from further back.
- Heinz and Schiestl
- The two monograms in the lower corners. The pair drew emergency money across Lower Franconia and beyond, and their hand is the closest thing this material has to a house style.
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.
The twenty-five is the interesting one. Its reverse is given over to a portrait of Johann Froben, who was born in Hammelburg in the 1460s and became the greatest printer in Basel - Erasmus's publisher and friend, the man who put the first printed Greek New Testament into Europe's hands in 1516 and whose house Holbein worked in. The note names him, dates his death to 1527, and sets his printer's device beside him.
A town of a few thousand people, printing emergency money in the last year of a lost war, chose to spend the design on a printer who had left five hundred years earlier. The face is the town itself: roofs and towers along the Saale, vineyards climbing the hill behind, with the denomination and the serial number in a panel below.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Notgeld of Hammelburg, 1918 in the collection.
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