10 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00509
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
bank_1: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
bank_2: not read unread
Printed as a facsimile; the engraver's reduction has lost the letter forms.
Grade: UNC (IBNS)
A pencilled dealer's reference, 847, in the upper margin of the reverse - the same hand on all three notes of the set. 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: 88.5 × 59 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Weimar Republic Brunswick Bank issue Thirty Years War

The type

Type: 10 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920
Printer: Not established
Rarity: common

Lutter am BarenbergeGermany, 1920 borders

Symbology

Die Flucht Christians von Dänemark: The flight of Christian IV of Denmark (1577–1648) after the battle of Lutter (1626). The defeat ended Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War and opened north Germany to the imperial armies.
A bank's own district: The note is good *für den Wirkungskreis dieser Bank und Sparkasse* - within the working area of this bank - which is narrower even than a town's boundary.
F. Jüttner: Signed on the plate; the same artist drew the Braunschweig transport company's note and the Brocken voucher.

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.

Not a town but a cooperative bank - the Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge e.G.m.b.H. - issuing a ten-pfennig Anweisung good within the bank's own district, dated the last day of 1920.

The village is famous for one afternoon. On 27 August 1626 Tilly destroyed the army of Christian IV of Denmark here, and the note shows the king's flight: horsemen in full career across a green field with the village behind them.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 10 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920 in the collection.

← → to move between notes