50 Pfennig, Stadt Eilenburg, 1921 (Franz Abt series, birth house)

By 1920 German Notgeld had stopped being a response to a coin shortage and become a collector's product. Towns, districts and firms commissioned decorative Serienscheine - lithographed sets printed far beyond any local need and sold to collectors, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of: a legend, a famous son, a battle, a trade, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

Eilenburg, a walled town on the Mulde in the Prussian Province of Saxony, honours here its most famous son, the composer Franz Abt (1819-1885). Abt was born in Eilenburg, the son of a pastor, and became one of the most popular song and male-choir composers of the nineteenth century - Wenn die Schwalben heimwaerts ziehn and hundreds of Lieder that German choral societies still sang by heart. This set of 50-Pfennig notes carries his portrait between the town arms on the obverse, over Gutschein der Stadt Eilenburg / Der Magistrat, and sets his song lyrics against views of the town on the numbered reverses. It is a second, separate Eilenburg series from the Thirty Years' War / Martin Rinckart notes also in this collection. Valid until 30 September 1921.

This note, sheet 2 of the set, shows the Geburtshaus Franz Abt - the composer's birth house - with the line Deutscher Maennerchor! Dem Vaterland, a nod to the choral movement he wrote for.