50 Pfennig, Braunschweig State Bank, 1921

Braunschweiger Notgeld - Braunschweigische Staatsbank

Reverse of 50 Pfennig, Braunschweig State Bank, 1921 — Reverse 600 dpi

This copy

Accession: OM-00490
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
bank: 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: 91.6 × 57.2 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Brunswick Town view Low German Weimar Republic

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Braunschweig State Bank, 1921
Printer: Druckerei Appelhans, Braunschweig
Rarity: common

BraunschweigGermany, 1920 borders

Inscriptions

Obverse - the terms

Dieser Schein wird von allen staatlichen Kassen in Zahlung genommen. Er verliert seine Gueltigkeit am 1. Mai 1923. Braunschweigische Staatsbank, Braunschweig, den 1. Mai 1921.

This note will be accepted in payment by all state treasuries. It loses its validity on 1 May 1923. Braunschweig State Bank, Braunschweig, 1 May 1921.

Symbology

The reverse: It shows the Altstadtmarkt with its fountain and the Martinikirche, captioned *Altbraunschweig*, under a Low German verse.
Low German: The verse is in Low German - *Plattdeutsch* - not standard German. It was the everyday speech of the north and had no official standing whatever; printing it on a state bank's money is a small, deliberate assertion of who the note is for.
The Altstadtmarkt: The old town market with the Gothic fountain of 1408 and the guildhall behind it - the square Braunschweig was governed from before the dukes took the town back.
The Saxon steed: The white horse rearing on a coloured ground, on the face of every note in the series. It is the arms of Old Saxony and of Brunswick, and it still stands on the arms of Lower Saxony today.
A state bank, not a town: Alone among the Notgeld here this was issued by the Braunschweigische Staatsbank for the Free State of Brunswick - a sovereign state of the Weimar Republic, small enough to fit inside some English counties, large enough to have its own bank of issue.
Two years' validity: Dated 1 May 1921 and dying 1 May 1923 - a long life for emergency money, and long enough that by the end of it the denomination on the face had been made meaningless by the inflation these notes were printed on the edge of.

What was happening

Notgeld began in 1914 as necessity: silver and nickel 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 entirely. The shortage was easing, but the market for the notes was not - collectors would pay well above face value for a complete set, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never come back to be redeemed. So the municipalities commissioned Serienscheine: lithographed series, four or six or ten notes to a set, printed far beyond any local need and illustrated with whatever the place was proud of. Local legends, famous sons, battles, saints, jokes 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.

Braunschweig's set is the largest in this collection and the only one issued by a state bank rather than a town hall: the Braunschweigische Staatsbank, for the Free State of Brunswick, all dated 1 May 1921 and all lapsing 1 May 1923.

The face is the same throughout - the white horse of Saxony rearing in a coloured panel, the denomination either side, blackletter across the top - and the colour changes with the value. The reverses divide into two quite different halves. One runs on Till Eulenspiegel, the trickster of the late-medieval jest books, who was born at Kneitlingen a few miles from Braunschweig and who is the region's defining folk figure; those notes carry Low German verse and a scene from one of his tales. The other half is topographical: Blankenburg, the Regenstein, the Altstadtmarkt, places in the duchy that people might want to visit again.

Printed by Appelhans of Braunschweig; the Eulenspiegel designs are signed Günther Clausen.

This note is the 50 Pfennig in grey and red. Its reverse shows the Altstadtmarkt with its fountain and the Martinikirche, captioned Altbraunschweig, under a Low German verse.

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

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