50 Pfennig, Bad Albersdorf, 1921
Notgeld Bad Albersdorf
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00630
- 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 × 64.3 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSchleswig-HolsteinDithmarschenMegalithsSpaWeimar Republic
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Bad Albersdorf, 1921
- Printer
- Louis Koch, Halberstadt
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- A megalithic dolmen as altar
- A Dithmarschen Stone Age tomb reimagined as an ancient Germanic sacrificial altar - prehistory pressed into patriotic service.
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.
Albersdorf, a health resort in Dithmarschen in western Holstein, sits in a landscape unusually rich in Neolithic megalithic tombs - the Dithmarschen "Huenengraeber," of which the Brutkamp dolmen nearby is the best known. The note turns one of them into an Altgermanischer Opferaltar, an "ancient Germanic sacrificial altar," the sort of prehistoric-national imagery that German Notgeld reached for again and again. Printed by Louis Koch of Halberstadt, serial 039400.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Bad Albersdorf, 1921 in the collection.
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