25 Pfennig, Gemeinde Kevelaer, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00434
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
mayor: 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: 98.1 × 64.6 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Rhineland Pilgrimage Low German

The type

Type: 25 Pfennig, Gemeinde Kevelaer, 1921
Printer: Not established
Rarity: common

KevelaerGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Dor hör ek thüss: "That is where I belong." A pilgrimage town writing its own draw in dialect, on money issued because there was no coin to put in the collection.
The Gnadenkapelle: The reverse shows the little hexagonal chapel that houses the image, in a sunburst above the parish arms.
Redemption by parish newspaper: The note dies a month after notice in the *Kevelaerer Volksblatt* - the smallest publication named as a legal instrument anywhere in this collection.

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.

Kevelaer on the lower Rhine is the largest Marian pilgrimage site in north-west Europe: since 1642 a small printed image of Our Lady of Luxembourg has drawn hundreds of thousands of walkers a year. The note shows a pilgrim leaning on his staff above the town, with the Low German line dor hör ek thüss - there I belong.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Gemeinde Kevelaer, 1921 in the collection.

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