50 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1920
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00406
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- 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.
- council_3
- 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
- 80.1 × 54.3 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicLower SaxonyDistrict issueCastle
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1920
- Printer
- Gebrueder Jaenecke, Hannover
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- Schloss zu Diepholz
- The round tower and the low ranges beside it, drawn in line. What survives today is largely this tower.
- Interlace borders
- The frame is knotwork rather than guilloche - an antiquarian taste that runs through a lot of north German Notgeld and has nothing to do with security.
- A district, not a town
- Good across every commune in the Kreis, which made it more useful than a single town's paper.
What was happening
Notgeld began in 1914 out of necessity: 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. The shortage was easing but the collector market was not, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never be presented. So the municipalities commissioned Serienscheine: lithographed sets, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - a legend, a famous son, a battle, a joke 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.
The district of Diepholz issued this in September 1920, redeemable at the district savings bank three months after the call. It is printed in a single ink - the note is found both in red and in a blue-green printing - with a border of Celtic-looking interlace, and the reverse shows the Schloss, a moated brick castle of the counts of Diepholz, who held the marshland here until 1585. It was printed by Gebrueder Jaenecke of Hannover.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1920 in the collection.
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