25 Pfennig, Braunschweig motor transport company, 1921
Kraftverkehrsgesellschaft m. b. H. Braunschweig
Loading the detail view…
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · Esc to close
This copy
- Accession
- OM-00370
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- Signatures
- This issue carries no bank manager or cashier signature.
- 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
- 89 × 57.5 mm (±0.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinBrunswickTransportHarzWeimar Republic
The type
- Type
- 25 Pfennig, Braunschweig motor transport company, 1921
- Printer
- Druckerei Appelhans, Braunschweig
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Dieser Gutschein wird an den Kassen der Gesellschaft in Braunschweig, Bad Harzburg, Braunlage, Hahnenklee und Wernigerode bis 1. Januar 1922 eingeloest. Braunschweig, 1. Juli 1921.
This voucher will be redeemed at the company's offices in Braunschweig, Bad Harzburg, Braunlage, Hahnenklee and Wernigerode until 1 January 1922. Braunschweig, 1 July 1921.
Symbology
- The motor coach
- Drawn on both faces, crossing a bridge on one and climbing a forest road on the other. In 1921 a scheduled motor bus into the Harz was still new enough to be the thing worth putting on the money.
- Der wilde Mann
- The wild man of the Harz, a hairy giant of the forest, sitting above the road on the reverse. He is old enough to be on the arms of Harz mining towns and he is here because tourists came looking for him.
- Gnomes
- Two of them flank the coach on the face. The Harz is mining country as well as legend country, and the two were never far apart.
- A company, not a council
- The issuer is a limited company in state and municipal ownership. By 1921 firms as well as towns were issuing Notgeld, redeemable only against their own services - which is closer to a modern gift card than to money.
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.
Not a town but a bus company: the Kraftverkehrsgesellschaft of Braunschweig, a state-and-municipal undertaking running motor coaches into the Harz. The voucher is redeemable at the company's own offices in Braunschweig, Bad Harzburg, Braunlage, Hahnenklee and Wernigerode - a list that is really a route map - and it expires on 1 January 1922.
Both faces put the coach in the mountains. On the front two gnomes watch it cross a bridge; on the back a giant, captioned Der wilde Mann, sits on a hillside above the road while the bus goes by beneath him. The Harz is the German folklore mountain - Walpurgisnacht, the Brocken, the wild man of the woods - and a bus company selling excursion tickets in 1921 knew exactly what it was trading on.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Braunschweig motor transport company, 1921 in the collection.
Print an album label for this note →
← → to move between notes