1 Mark, Gemeinden Quern, 1921

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.

Quern lies in Angeln, the peninsula of eastern Schleswig between the Flensburg Fjord and the Schlei, close to the German-Danish border fixed by the plebiscite of 1920. That border is the note's subject. One side names the farmstead of Neu-Daenemark - "New Denmark" - and the other shows the Scheersberg, the highest and, the note says, finest point in Angeln, crowned by its Bismarck tower. After the vote that left northern Schleswig Danish and Angeln German, a border commune putting "New Denmark" and a Bismarck tower on the same note was making a quiet point. Valid until 30 September 1921.