50 Pfennig, Stadt Magdeburg, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00474
Serial: D 24
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
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: 84 × 58.3 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Saxony-Anhalt Expressionism Otto the Great

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Stadt Magdeburg, 1921
Printer: Not established
Rarity: common

MagdeburgGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Neu-Magdeburg: The slogan of the city's reconstruction under Bruno Taut (1880–1938), who arrived as *Stadtbaurat* in 1921 and set about painting the city. The note is municipal propaganda for a modernist programme, issued as legal small change.
The Magdeburg Reiter: The thirteenth-century equestrian statue, traditionally Otto I, redrawn as faceted planes of red - the oldest thing in the city in the newest possible manner.
Cranes and aeroplanes: The reverse is a building site seen as a vision: derricks, a biplane, scaffolds, barges, the cathedral among them. In 1921 this is what optimism looked like.
Otto I. erbaut Magdeburg: Otto the Great made Magdeburg his seat and is buried in its cathedral. The note claims him as the first builder of the city the slogan wants rebuilt.

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.

And this is what changed. Magdeburg's 1921 note is one of the most startling objects in the whole of German Notgeld: a flat red and green design of jagged, splintered forms, the Magdeburg Reiter on the face captioned Otto I. erbaut Magdeburg, and on the reverse a city of cranes, aeroplanes and scaffolding under the line dereinst in ungehemmtem Schaffen werde Neu-Magdeburg zur schönsten Stadt der Erde - one day, in unhindered work, let New Magdeburg become the most beautiful city on earth.

This is Bruno Taut's (1880–1938) Magdeburg. As city architect from 1921 he had the façades of the old town painted in violent colour, and the note belongs to exactly that moment.

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

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