25 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1920

This copy

Accession: OM-00637
Series year: 1920
Actually issued: 1920
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: 83.7 × 51.5 mm (±1.6, from the scan)
Themes: Notgeld Serienschein Lower Saxony District issue Weimar Republic

The type

Type: 25 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1920
Printer: Schroedersche Buchdruckerei, Diepholz
Rarity: common

DiepholzGermany, 1920 borders

Inscriptions

Reverse - the terms

Gutschein ueber 25 Pfennig fuer den Kreis Diepholz. Einloesung erfolgt jederzeit durch die unterzeichnete Kasse bis 3 Monate nach erfolgtem Aufrufe in der Diepholzer Kreiszeitung.

Voucher for 25 Pfennig for the district of Diepholz. Redeemable at any time by the undersigned treasury until three months after a call published in the Diepholz district newspaper.

Symbology

A Low-German hall-house: The thatched farmstead of the Diepholz moorland, the district's own landscape rather than a town's monument.
Interlace border: Knotwork rather than guilloche - the antiquarian taste that runs through north German Notgeld.

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.

The rural district (Kreis) of Diepholz in the moorland of Lower Saxony issued a set of single-colour notes in September 1920, redeemable at the district savings bank three months after a call published in the Diepholzer Kreiszeitung. This 25-Pfennig value is printed in blue, with an interlace border and a Low-German hall-house - the long thatched farmstead of the north German plain. It is the small sister of the 50-Pfennig note of the same series held in this collection.

This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 25 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1920 in the collection.

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