50 Pfennig, Leer in Ostfriesland, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00452
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
society: 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: 91.3 × 64 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Lower Saxony East Frisia Low German Heritage society

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Leer in Ostfriesland, 1921
Printer: Harting & Co., Hamburg
Rarity: common

LeerGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

A heritage society's money: The issuer is a voluntary association, not a council. The note funded the preservation of exactly the kind of thing printed on it.
Rathenburg: The face shows the manor house of that name near Leer among its trees.
The lady of 1500: The reverse has a woman in the dress of about 1500, drawn full length between two panels of Low German - East Frisia's own past, claimed by the society that was trying to keep it.
Plattdeutsch throughout: Not a word of standard German on either face. In East Frisia in 1921 that was the language people actually used.

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.

Not the town but a society: the Verein für Heimatschutz und Heimatgeschichte of Leer in East Frisia issued this in October 1921 belt för de Tiet fan de Heimatwillen - struck for the time, for the sake of the homeland. A local-history association printing currency to fund itself is about as far from a treasury as Notgeld gets.

The Low German motto on the face is the best line in the batch: waar de Minsk na jankt un jagt, Nôtgeld het gien Swien smagt - whatever people whine and chase after, emergency money has never tasted good to any pig.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Leer in Ostfriesland, 1921 in the collection.

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