50 Pfennig, Stadt Weissenfels, 1921 (shoe industry)
Notgeld der Stadt Weissenfels
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00627
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- Signatures
- This issue carries no bank manager or cashier signature.
- Grade
- XF (IBNS)
Estimated from the archival scan. Folds, soiling and edge condition are visible at this resolution; paper crispness, pinholes, small repairs and pressing are not.
- Estimated value
- $5.5 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-10-17.
- Dimensions
- 100 × 70.3 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinSaxonyIndustryShoemakingWeimar Republic
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Weissenfels, 1921 (shoe industry)
- Printer
- Not established; the scene is signed Bay Paysen
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Notgeld der Stadt Weissenfels. Gueltig bis vier Wochen nach der Ungueltigkeitserklaerung im hiesigen Amtsblatt. Der Magistrat.
Emergency money of the town of Weissenfels. Valid until four weeks after it is declared void in the local gazette. The magistrate.
Symbology
- A 1914 boot and a 1919 shoe
- The shoe city's war and peace: army boots giving way to ladies' footwear as the factories reconverted.
- Iron journeymen
- The verse celebrates the machines that replaced the hand cobblers, a note from a town defined by one industry.
What was happening
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.
Weissenfels on the Saale was Germany's Schuhstadt - the shoe city - and its Notgeld advertises the trade. The scene contrasts a soldier's boot of 1914 with a lady's shoe of 1919: the factory turning from army boots back to civilian footwear after the war, its benches of cobblers replaced by machines - Eiserner Gesellen Kraft ("the strength of iron journeymen") now turning out shoes a hundredfold. The obverse carries the town arms and Notgeld der Stadt Weissenfels / Der Magistrat, issued 1921.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Weissenfels, 1921 (shoe industry) in the collection.
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