75 Pfennig, Brockengutschein, 1921
Brockengutschein - Der Brockenwirt
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00498
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- innkeeper
- 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
- 94.5 × 61.7 mm (±1.1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinHarzGoetheWalpurgisnachtWeimar Republic
The type
- Type
- 75 Pfennig, Brockengutschein, 1921
- Printer
- Druckerei Appelhans, Braunschweig; the design is signed F. Juettner
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Dieser Brockengutschein wird von allen Verkaufs- u. Zahlungsstellen auf dem Brocken bis zum 15. 5. 1922 in Zahlung genommen. Brocken, d. 1. 7. 1921. Der Brockenwirt, Rudolph Schade.
This Brocken voucher will be accepted in payment by all sales and payment points on the Brocken until 15 May 1922. Brocken, 1 July 1921. The Brocken landlord, Rudolph Schade.
Symbology
- Walpurgisnacht
- The night of 30 April, when according to long tradition the witches of Germany fly to the Brocken. Goethe put the scene in *Faust* and fixed it in literature; the mountain has been trading on it ever since.
- Mephistopheles
- Named in the caption at the foot of the face, standing in red at the right while the dance streams past: *Es geht zum neuen Tanz: nun kommt, wir greifen zu* - the dance begins anew, come, let us join in.
- The apple-tree verse
- The reverse carries Faust's lines about dreaming of an apple tree with two fine apples on it that tempted him to climb. In Goethe it is said during the dance with a young witch, and it is not about fruit.
- Issued by an innkeeper
- The guarantee is one man's, redeemable only at the top of a mountain. It is the furthest thing from state money in this collection, and it still calls itself a Gutschein and still names a date.
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.
The oddest issuer in the collection: not a town, not a district, not a company, but the landlord of the inn on top of a mountain. The Brocken is the highest peak of the Harz at 1,142 metres, and the Brockenwirt Rudolph Schade issued this voucher to be taken in payment at every sales and payment point on the summit until 15 May 1922.
Both faces are Walpurgisnacht. Goethe (1749–1832) set the witches' sabbath of Faust on this mountain, and the note illustrates it directly: Mephistopheles at the right of the face with a line of naked witches dancing away from him, and on the reverse the crowd of them streaming through the pines under four lines of Faust's own - Einst hab ich einen schönen Traum... da sah ich einen Apfelbaum.
A mountain inn printing Goethe on its own currency, for walkers to carry down as a souvenir.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 75 Pfennig, Brockengutschein, 1921 in the collection.
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