50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Ilsenburg, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00427
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
council: 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: 80.8 × 55.1 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Saxony-Anhalt Harz Forest

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Ilsenburg, 1921
Printer: Druckerei Appelhans, Braunschweig
Rarity: common

IlsenburgGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

The wild man: The hairy forest giant of Harz legend, staff in hand. He appears on the arms of half the mining towns of the range and on a good deal of their money.
Schloss und Klosterkirche: The Romanesque abbey church and the schloss built onto it, with sheep in the foreground.
Eighteen months' validity: Long for emergency money, and a sign the commune expected the shortage to last. It did.

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.

Ilsenburg lies at the foot of the Brocken on the northern Harz, and its June 1921 note has an unusually long life - valid until 1 January 1923. The face shows a wild man of the woods between two wreaths of hops and fir; the reverse the castle and the abbey church among trees.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Ilsenburg, 1921 in the collection.

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