25 Pfennig, Gemeinde Suchsdorf, 1921 (no Danes)

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.

Suchsdorf, now a northern suburb of Kiel on the bank of the Kiel Canal, issued its 1921 Notgeld in the aftermath of the Schleswig plebiscite, and the set is as nationalist as any in this collection. The notes carry Schleswig-Holstein's lions and the blunt slogans of a border that had just been drawn - the kind of agitation money that passed for small change along the new frontier. Valid until 31 August 1921.

This note shows two figures wrestling over the Danish and German flags under the slogan Wir wollen keine Daenen sein, wir wollen Deutsche bleiben - we do not want to be Danes, we want to stay German; the reverse shows a sower in the fields.