50 Pfennig, Stadt Buetzow, 1921
Reutergeld der Stadt Buetzow
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00364
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- council_1
- not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
- council_2
- 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
- 114.4 × 79.8 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinMecklenburgLow GermanFritz ReuterWeimar Republic
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Buetzow, 1921
- Printer
- Not established; the design is signed Egon Tschirch
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Gueltig fuer den Geldverkehr innerhalb des Stadtgebietes bis 28. Februar 1922. Der Rat der Stadt Buetzow.
Valid for monetary transactions within the town boundary until 28 February 1922. The council of the town of Bützow.
Uns' Herrgott helpt blot den, de sick suelwen helpt!
Our Lord helps only those who help themselves!
Symbology
- Fritz Reuter
- Fritz Reuter (1810–1874), the Mecklenburg writer who proved Low German could carry a novel. The 1921 Reutergeld series ran across a group of Mecklenburg towns, each illustrating a line of his - a coordinated literary monument paid for by selling emergency money to collectors.
- Two mitres
- Bützow was a residence of the bishops of Schwerin, and the mitres flanking the denomination say so. The town later held Mecklenburg's university for forty years before it went back to Rostock.
- Low German
- The motto is in Plattdeutsch, as all the Reutergeld is. That is the entire point of the series: money printed in a language the state did not use.
- Egon Tschirch
- Egon Tschirch (1889–1948), a Rostock painter associated with the Mecklenburg secession, who drew several notes in the Reutergeld series. Signed at the top right of the face.
What was happening
Notgeld began in 1914 as necessity: silver and nickel coin vanished into hoards within weeks of mobilisation, and towns printed their own small change because the Reichsbank could not supply enough.
By 1920 it had become something else entirely. The shortage was easing, but the market for the notes was not - collectors would pay well above face value for a complete set, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never come back to be redeemed. So the municipalities commissioned Serienscheine: lithographed series, four or six or ten notes to a set, printed far beyond any local need and illustrated with whatever the place was proud of. Local legends, famous sons, battles, saints, jokes in dialect.
The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made by places with a few thousand inhabitants, in the years when Germany's currency was dying.
This is Reutergeld - Reuter money. In 1921 a group of Mecklenburg towns issued a joint series celebrating Fritz Reuter (1810-1874), the writer who made literature out of Low German and is to Mecklenburg what Burns is to Scotland. Each town took a scene and a line of his; Bützow took Uns' Herrgott helpt blot den, de sick sülwen helpt - Our Lord helps only those who help themselves.
Bützow was a bishop's residence and then the seat of Mecklenburg's short-lived university, which is why two mitres flank the denomination on the face. The drawing is by Egon Tschirch, a Rostock painter of the Mecklenburg secession.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Buetzow, 1921 in the collection.
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