50 Pfennig, Stadt Kitzingen, town silhouette, 1921
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00435
- 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
- 96.3 × 77.4 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicFranconiaBavariaWineHoarding
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Kitzingen, town silhouette, 1921
- Printer
- H. Tritsch, Würzburg-Aumühle
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- Das Hamsterpaar
- *Hamstern* - to hoard - was the word of the period, and the note blames the coin shortage squarely on it. Whether hoarders or the Reichsbank were at fault, this is what a town told its citizens.
- The town in silhouette
- Spires and gables cut flat in green along the bottom of the face - Kitzingen seen from across its vineyards.
- R. Rother
- Signed in the plate, scene 1 of a set.
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.
A second Kitzingen design, quite different from the leaning tower: a green silhouette of the whole town along the Main, and on the reverse a piece of straightforward anger. Two black figures creep off with a sack marked 1000 Mk under the line auf einmal ward das Kleingeld rar ... warum? Frag nur das Hamsterpaar - all at once the small change grew scarce; why? Just ask the hoarding pair.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Kitzingen, town silhouette, 1921 in the collection.
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