25 Pfennig, Stadt Deggendorf, 1920
Notgeld der Stadt Deggendorf
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00343
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- mayor
- Reuss certain
Set in type on the note rather than signed. Titled rechtskundiger Bürgermeister.
- city_treasurer
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- Grade
- UNC (IBNS)
The same type and printing as OM-00342. 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
- 99 × 71.6 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldEmergency moneyBavariaSerienscheinLocal cuisineWeimar Republic
The type
- Type
- 25 Pfennig, Stadt Deggendorf, 1920
- Printer
- H. Stuertz A.-G., Wuerzburg
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Notgeld der Stadt Deggendorf. D. Gutschein verliert seine Gueltigkeit ein Monat nach erfolgter Bekanntmachung. Deggendorf, Septemb. 1920. Stadtrat. Reuss, rechtsk. Buergermeister. Stadtkaemmerer.
Emergency money of the town of Deggendorf. This voucher loses its validity one month after the announcement is made. Deggendorf, September 1920. Town council. Reuss, legally qualified mayor. Municipal treasurer.
Symbology
- The bowl of dumplings
- Deggendorf is the *Knoedelstadt*, the dumpling town, and the note puts a heaped bowl of them beside the town hall tower at the same size. A place naming itself by what it eats.
- The old town hall tower
- The Gothic tower with its stepped gable and clock, the building Deggendorf is recognised by, drawn on both faces from different angles.
- Four-colour printing on a 25-Pfennig note
- The reverse alone carries black, orange, green and a flat red. No town needed that to make change; it needed it to sell sets to collectors, which by September 1920 was the point of the exercise.
- Rechtskundiger Buergermeister
- The mayor's title states that he is legally qualified - a Bavarian distinction between a professional town head and an honorary one. A small assertion that this is a proper town.
What was happening
Notgeld - "emergency money". German towns, districts and firms began printing their own small change in 1914, when silver and nickel coin disappeared into hoards within weeks of mobilisation, and did not really stop until the stabilisation of 1923.
What began as necessity turned into a craze. By 1920 municipalities were commissioning Serienscheine: lithographed sets aimed squarely at collectors, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with local legends, landmarks, famous sons and jokes in dialect. Selling them was itself a way of raising money - the town took real marks for notes it hoped would never be presented for redemption. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, produced by places with a few thousand inhabitants.
Deggendorf is a Danube town in Lower Bavaria, at the foot of the Bavarian Forest. Its twenty-five Pfennig note is dated September 1920, numbered, and lapses one month after the town announces the call - signed by the legally qualified mayor Reuss and the municipal treasurer.
Deggendorf's nickname is Knoedelstadt, the dumpling town, and the note takes it seriously. Beside the Gothic tower of the old town hall on the face sits a bowl heaped with dumplings, drawn at the same scale as the architecture. Two copies are held, from the same printing.
The reverse is an entirely different register: the town hall and the roofs of the old town against a burnt-orange evening sky, printed in four colours, with the arms of the town in the corner. For a twenty-five Pfennig note this is a lot of press work - which is the whole point of a Serienschein.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Stadt Deggendorf, 1920 in the collection.
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