50 Pfennig, Zoologischer Garten Hamburg, 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.

This note was good only inside one place: Dieser Schein gilt nur im Zoologischen Garten - valid only in the Zoological Garden - until 31 May 1922. It was issued by the old Zoologischer Garten Hamburg (founded 1863 near St. Pauli, distinct from Hagenbeck's Tierpark), a private institution printing its own change for the turnstiles and kiosks. The obverse carries a fish dressed as a top-hatted gentleman and a Low-German verse; the reverse shows a sunlit corner of the gardens with exotic birds, signed by the illustrator O. Herfurth.