20 Pfennig, Stadt Meiningen, 1921
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00481
- 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
- 74.5 × 49.9 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicThuringiaTown gate
The type
- Type
- 20 Pfennig, Stadt Meiningen, 1921
- Printer
- Franz Scheiner, Würzburg
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- Die Meininger Henne
- A hen on a gate. The arms of Meiningen have carried one since the Middle Ages and nobody is quite sure why.
- Dated 21 July 1921
- The set runs across the summer of 1921, each denomination a few weeks apart.
- Franz Scheiner, Würzburg
- A Franconian art printer who produced a great deal of Thuringian Notgeld.
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.
Meiningen was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Meiningen, and its court theatre under Duke Georg II was the most influential company in nineteenth-century Europe - the Meininger invented the modern idea of a director. The town's 1921 notes are quieter than that suggests: the gate with its hen, the old market school, and a good deal of ornamental lettering.
The twenty shows the town gate against an orange sky, a hen standing in the archway - the Meininger Henne, the bird on the town's arms.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 20 Pfennig, Stadt Meiningen, 1921 in the collection.
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