10 Pfennig, Stadt Linz am Rhein, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00460
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
mayor: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Grade: VF (IBNS)
Circulated: overall soiling, a ragged upper edge with small losses, and rounded corners. A note that spent three years in use, which its own long validity allowed. 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: $3 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-09-26.
Dimensions: 46.2 × 46.2 mm (±2.1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Rhineland French occupation Town gate

The type

Type: 10 Pfennig, Stadt Linz am Rhein, 1920
Printer: M. DuMont Schauberg, Köln
Rarity: common

Linz am RheinGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Three years' validity: Almost unheard of for a town note. By the day it expired, ten pfennig would not have bought a grain of wheat: the hyperinflation peaked that November.
The Neutor: The reverse shows one of the town's gate towers above the roofs, framed in a scalloped border - Linz still has its complete medieval wall circuit.
M. DuMont Schauberg, Köln: The Cologne house that printed the city's own Notgeld. Its imprint is the clearest evidence that this is the Rhenish Linz and not the Austrian one.

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.

Linz am Rhein - not the Austrian one - is a walled town on the right bank below Bonn, in territory occupied by Allied troops when this was issued on 1 July 1920. It runs for an unusually long time: validity expires on 1 October 1923, more than three years out.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Pfennig, Stadt Linz am Rhein, 1920 in the collection.

← → to move between notes