25 Pfennig, Stadt Krempe
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00444
- Series year
- 1920
- Actually issued
- 1920
- magistrate
- 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
- 92.4 × 64.1 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicHolsteinLow GermanFortress
The type
- Type
- 25 Pfennig, Stadt Krempe
- Printer
- Jul. Nielsen, Itzehoe
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- Mit Erlaubniss na Kremp
- "With permission, to Krempe." The caption under the gate, in dialect, with the manner of a pass being shown at the barrier.
- The fortifications
- Krempe's walls were slighted after the Thirty Years' War and the town never recovered its importance. The note draws them back in.
- Twenty-five Penn
- The denomination is spelled the Low German way on the face, *Penn* rather than Pfennig.
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.
Krempe in Holstein was a fortress town - Christian IV of Denmark walled it in the 1620s, and Wallenstein took it in 1627. The note shows the water gate with a drawbridge and ships beyond, under the Low German line wa wi tohoop hebt dahn, het üns noch nüms wat dahn - what we have done together, no one has yet undone.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Stadt Krempe in the collection.
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