75 Pfennig, Stadt Medebach, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00479
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
council_1: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
council_2: 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: 92.1 × 62 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Westphalia Sauerland Low German Railway

The type

Type: 75 Pfennig, Stadt Medebach, 1921
Printer: F. W. Becker, Arnsberg
Rarity: common

MedebachGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Der Gott der Eisen wachsen ließ: "The God who let iron grow" — the opening of Ernst Moritz Arndt's (1769–1860) *Vaterlandslied* of 1812, a patriotic hymn about iron and swords, redirected here to a branch line.
Dai wörl wuall lattwer te Fautgahn: "He would rather go on foot." The town thanks providence for its railway and mocks it in the same breath.
The Kleinbahn: Narrow-gauge lines reached the Sauerland valleys late and were the making of towns like Medebach - which did not stop anyone complaining about them.

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.

Medebach is a small town in the Sauerland uplands of Westphalia, and its September 1921 notes are in Sauerland Low German throughout - a dialect different again from the Plattdeutsch of the coast.

The seventy-five is about the light railway. A train runs along an embankment under the line der Gott der Eisen wachsen ließ, dai gaff uns de Kleinbahn - the God who let iron grow, he gave us the narrow-gauge line - and a second couplet adding that anyone who has once ridden it would rather walk.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 75 Pfennig, Stadt Medebach, 1921 in the collection.

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