25 Pfennig, Stadt Ansbach, Bernadotte

Jubilaeums-Notgeld der Kreishauptstadt Ansbach

Reverse of 25 Pfennig, Stadt Ansbach, Bernadotte — Reverse 600 dpi

This copy

Accession: OM-00491
Series year: 1921
Actually issued: 1921
mayor: 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: 89.7 × 60.9 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Bavaria Franconia Town anniversary Silhouette Weimar Republic

The type

Type: 25 Pfennig, Stadt Ansbach, Bernadotte
Printer: Not established; the design is signed Willy and Flach
Rarity: common

AnsbachGermany, 1920 borders

Inscriptions

Obverse - the terms

Jubilaeums-Notgeld der Kreishauptstadt Ansbach. Nur mit der amtl. Nummer. Giltig bis auf Widerruf. Stadtrat, 12. 8. 21.

Jubilee emergency money of the district capital Ansbach. Valid only with the official number. Valid until revoked. Town council, 12 August 1921.

Symbology

The 1805 scene: The reverse shows a French grenadier striding past a broken frontier barrier with the town's spires behind him: Bernadotte's corps crossing neutral Ansbach in 1805 on its way to Austerlitz.
Bernadotte at the barrier: In October 1805 Bernadotte marched his corps through Ansbach, then neutral Prussian territory, to get behind the Austrians at Ulm. The violation outraged Berlin and very nearly brought Prussia into the war a year early. The note shows the moment exactly: the frontier barrier broken, the grenadier walking through it.
Three fish on a bend: The arms of Ansbach, on the face of every note in the set. The town stands on the Rezat, and the fish are older than any of the history on the reverses.
1221-1921: The anniversary the set exists for: seven hundred years since Ansbach first appears in a document. The celebration and the emergency money are the same act - the town could not have afforded one without selling the other.
Paper-cut silhouette: The whole set is cut as *Scherenschnitt*, black against one flat colour, a folk technique with a long German history and exactly the right one for a cheap two-colour press. Nothing is modelled; everything is outline.
Giltig bis auf Widerruf: "Valid until revoked" - no expiry date at all. A town that names no day is a town in no hurry to be asked for the money back.

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.

Ansbach was the residence of the Franconian branch of the Hohenzollerns - margraves who ruled here from 1331 until the principality was sold to Prussia in 1791, and whose family went on to become kings of Prussia and emperors of Germany. In 1921 the town marked the seven hundredth anniversary of its first documentary mention, in 1221, and paid for the celebration in the way every German town did that year: by printing money.

The set is a history lesson in silhouette. Six scenes, cut as black paper-cuts against flat green or orange, each captioned with a year and a title, running from the charter of 1221 to Bernadotte's troops in 1805. The front is the same on every note - the town arms of three fish on a bend, the dates 1221 and 1921, and the signature of the legally qualified first mayor, dated 12 August 1921. The denomination changes the colour; the scene changes the note.

Two artists signed it, "Willy" at the lower left and "Flach" at the lower right.

This note carries the 1805 scene, printed in green: a French grenadier striding past a broken frontier barrier with the town's spires behind him: Bernadotte's corps crossing neutral Ansbach in 1805 on its way to Austerlitz.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Stadt Ansbach, Bernadotte in the collection.

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