50 Pfennig, Stadt Lenzen an der Elbe, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00456
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: 90.3 × 68.5 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Brandenburg Prignitz Cattle breeding

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Stadt Lenzen an der Elbe, 1921
Printer: Gebr. Parcus, München
Rarity: common

LenzenGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

The Herdbuch bull: A pedigree black-and-white bull, drawn at full length across the whole reverse. Agricultural improvement societies were a serious business in Prussia, and Lenzen put its own on the money.
Schwarz und weiß wie Preußens Fahnen: "Black and white like Prussia's flags." The verse makes the breed's colouring into Prussian patriotism, which is either charming or absurd depending on the reader.
Ort slavischen Ursprungs: The town states plainly that it was founded by Slavs - the Wends of the Prignitz - which in 1921, and on a note printed a hundred kilometres from Kreuzburg's very different sentiments, is worth noticing.

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.

Lenzen on the Elbe announces its own antiquity on the face: Ort slavischen Ursprungs, der älteste der Prignitz, urkundlich zuerst im Jahre 929 erwähnt - a place of Slavic origin, the oldest in the Prignitz, first recorded in 929.

The reverse is a prize bull. The Lenzener Herdbuchgesellschaft, the local herd-book society founded in 1896, gets a verse of its own: black and white like Prussia's colours, with its ancestors in East Frisia, so farmers, never rest - breed only such herd-book cattle.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Lenzen an der Elbe, 1921 in the collection.

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