30 Pfennig, Stadt Meiningen, 1921

This copy

Accession: OM-00482
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: 86.1 × 58 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Thuringia Town gate

The type

Type: 30 Pfennig, Stadt Meiningen, 1921
Printer: Franz Scheiner, Würzburg
Rarity: common

MeiningenGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

The same gate, a different ground: The set varies the colour and the ornament rather than the picture - closer to a print run than a picture series.
Thirty Pfennig: An unusual value, and the sign of a set rather than a till.
Stadtkämmerei und Sparkasse: Redeemable at both the municipal treasury and the savings bank, which is a stronger promise than a treasury alone.

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 thirty repeats the gate and the hen in a violet ground, dated ten days after the twenty.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 30 Pfennig, Stadt Meiningen, 1921 in the collection.

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