50 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920

Anweisung der Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge

Reverse of 50 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920 — Reverse 600 dpi

This copy

Accession: OM-00510
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: 92.6 × 62.7 mm (±0.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Brunswick Bank issue Thirty Years War Weimar Republic

The type

Type: 50 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920
Printer: Not established
Rarity: common

Lutter am BarenbergeGermany, 1920 borders

Inscriptions

Reverse - the terms

Anweisung ueber 50 Pfg. auf die Volksbank Lutter a. Barenberge E.G.m.u.H. fuer den Wirkungskreis dieser Bank und Sparkasse. Lutter am Barenberge, den 30. 12. 1920. Volksbank zu Lutter/Bbge E.G.m.u.H.

Order for 50 pfennig on the Volksbank of Lutter am Barenberge, registered cooperative with unlimited liability, for the working area of this bank and savings bank. Lutter am Barenberge, 30 December 1920. Volksbank of Lutter am Barenberge.

Symbology

The scene: Captioned *Im Lager der Kaiserlichen nach der Schlacht bei Lutter am Barenberge*: the imperial camp afterwards, in yellow and slate: soldiers round a broached barrel, a drummer, a woman among them, a man stooping over a cooking pot.
The camp, not the battle: The third note leaves the fighting for what came after: drink, plunder and a camp following. The armies of the Thirty Years' War lived off the country they marched through, and northern Germany paid for this victory for years.
A woman in the camp: Camp followers outnumbered soldiers in some seventeenth-century armies. She is drawn matter- of-factly, in the middle of the scene, which is more honest than most commemorative money manages.
A bank's own district: Not a town's money. The note is good only within the area this one cooperative bank and its savings bank served, which is narrower than any municipal boundary in the collection.
F. Jüttner: Signed at the lower left of every face. The same hand drew the Braunschweig motor company's note and the Brocken voucher, so the artist can be followed across three very different issuers here.
Corner letters F and J: Small letters in the lower corners of the reverse, on all three denominations - print-run marks rather than a picture series.
30 December 1920: All three dated the same day, at the end of a year in which the mark had already lost most of what it had left. A village bank commemorating a seventeenth-century battle while the currency it was denominated in came apart.

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.

Lutter am Barenberge is a village in the Brunswick country at the northern edge of the Harz, and its whole claim on history is one afternoon. On 27 August 1626 Tilly, commanding the army of the Catholic League, destroyed the Danish army of Christian IV here. The defeat ended Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War, broke the Protestant cause in Lower Saxony and opened northern Germany to the imperial armies.

The notes were issued not by the village but by its cooperative bank - the Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge e.G.m.u.H. - on 30 December 1920, good only für den Wirkungskreis dieser Bank und Sparkasse: within the working area of this bank and savings bank. That is a narrower circulation than any town boundary in this collection.

All three were drawn by F. Jüttner, who also drew the Braunschweig transport company's note and the Brocken innkeeper's voucher. Between them they run the battle as a sequence: the rout, the victor, and the aftermath.

This is the 50 Pfennig, captioned Im Lager der Kaiserlichen nach der Schlacht bei Lutter am Barenberge. It shows the imperial camp afterwards, in yellow and slate: soldiers round a broached barrel, a drummer, a woman among them, a man stooping over a cooking pot.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920 in the collection.

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