50 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1921 (Lemfoerde)

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.

In August 1921 the district of Diepholz issued a second, far more lavish series than its plain 1920 notes: full-colour sheets drawn by C. Joerres and printed by Casten & Suhling of Bremen, each one portraying a different place in the Kreis - Barnstorf, Lemfoerde and the rest - with a Low-German verse. The Gutschein fuer den Kreis Diepholz, the serial and the signatures of the Kreissparkasse sit on the obverse, over the district arms.

This note shows Lemfoerde im Jahre 1621, with the note that Count Friedrich von Diepholz made over the house of Lemfoerde to his wife Eva von Regenstein as her dower in 1523, and a Low-German verse on rags turned into money - Ut Lumpen makt dat Geld. Serial 79617.