50 Pfennig, Stadt Kappeln, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00433
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
mayor: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
council: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Grade: AU (IBNS)
Light toning across the sheet. 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: 97.4 × 69.8 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Schleswig Low German Fishing

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Stadt Kappeln, 1920
Printer: Not established
Rarity: common

KappelnGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Herring on the Schlei: Kappeln's herring weir is the last of its kind in Europe. The boats on the face are what the town was.
A quartered shield: The reverse carries a nine-part shield of small devices - fish, a boat, a crescent, a heart - more a rebus of the town than a coat of arms.
Two languages of law: The redemption clause is printed twice, once in German and once in Low German, side by side. Kappeln had voted to stay German in the Schleswig plebiscite four months earlier, and the note is bilingual in the way the region actually was.

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.

Kappeln stands on the Schlei, the long sea inlet that nearly cuts Schleswig in two, and its July 1920 note is a fishing picture: herring boats drawn up on the shallows, men working nets, the town's spires along the far bank.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Kappeln, 1920 in the collection.

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