50 Pfennig, Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Ministry, 1922

This copy

Accession

OM-00477

Serial

Serie D 510337

Series year

1922

Actually issued

1922

state_ministry_1

not read unread

Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.

state_ministry_2

not read unread

Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.

state_ministry_3

not read unread

Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.

state_ministry_4

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

78.7 × 53.8 mm (±0.5, from the scan)

Themes

NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicMecklenburgGerman state issue

The type

Type

50 Pfennig, Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Ministry, 1922

Printer

Bärensprungsche Hofbuchdruckerei, Schwerin

Rarity

common

Symbology

Serie D

Lettered runs with a red serial. A state ministry accounting for its own paper.

The bull's head

Mecklenburg's emblem since the thirteenth century, crowned, at the centre of the face.

Freistaat Mecklenburg-Schwerin

The name runs round all four sides of the border. A sovereign state of the Weimar Republic, printing its own small change.

Zerrissene Scheine

The reverse warns that torn or illegible notes whose number cannot be read will not be redeemed - the same clause as on the twenty-five.

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.

The companion to the state ministry's twenty-five: same guarantee, same printer, same four ministers' signatures, valid to 1 May 1922. The face is a panorama of the Free State - Schwerin's towers on one side, a windmill and the Baltic on the other - with the bull's head of Mecklenburg between them.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Ministry, 1922 in the collection.