25 Pfennig, Stadt Itzehoe, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00428
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
magistrate: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Grade: AU (IBNS)
Bright; a faint bend at one corner. About uncurrent: bright and unfolded, with light handling - a corner bump or a faint edge tone. Estimated from the 600 dpi archival scan, which cannot show paper crispness, pinholes, pressing or small repairs.
Estimated value: $8 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
Dimensions: 88.7 × 59.6 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Holstein Low German Market scene

The type

Type: 25 Pfennig, Stadt Itzehoe, 1920
Printer: Jul. Nielsen, Itzehoe
Rarity: common

ItzehoeGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

De lüttste Schien: "The littlest note." A town describing its own smallest denomination affectionately, in the language its people actually spoke.
De Holstenland staht tru un fast: A second line runs round the border: Holstein stands true and firm. Itzehoe had been Danish within living memory of the older people drawn here.
Jul. Nielsen, Itzehoe: Printed in the town; the same house printed Krempe's note, twenty kilometres away.

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.

Itzehoe on the Stör is one of the oldest towns in Holstein, and its August 1920 note is entirely in Low German. Twintig Penn un teif darto, de lüttste Schien von Itzehoe - twenty pence and a bit besides, the littlest note of Itzehoe - over a market scene of Holstein country people in eighteenth-century dress.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Stadt Itzehoe, 1920 in the collection.

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