50 Pfennig, Amtsgemeinde Horn (Lippe), 1921
Amtsgemeinde Horn (Lippe)
Loading the detail view…
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to pan · Esc to close
This copy
- Accession
- OM-00760
- Series year
- 1921
- Actually issued
- 1921
- Signatures
- This issue carries no bank manager or cashier signature.
- Grade
- VF (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. Grade applied uniformly across this batch pending individual review.
- Estimated value
- $3 indicative
Category benchmark scaled for grade — an order of magnitude, not an appraisal. Priced 2026-10-24.
- Dimensions
- 110.3 × 67.9 mm (±1, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldWeimar RepublicLippeHermannsschlacht
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Amtsgemeinde Horn (Lippe), 1921
- Rarity
- common
Inscriptions
Als die Römer frech geworden... met der grauden, frechen Schnuden
When the Romans got cheeky... with their great cheeky snout. (A Low-German rendering of the refrain of Scheffel's comic song on the battle in the Teutoburg Forest.)
Einzulösen bei der Amts-Sparkasse Horn bis 31. Dezember 1921.
Redeemable at the Horn district savings bank until 31 December 1921.
Symbology
- The Hermannsdenkmal (obverse)
- The Arminius monument above Detmold, completed in 1875: a towering copper figure of Hermann with raised sword, erected as a national symbol near the supposed site of the ancient victory.
- The Varusschlacht (reverse)
- The battle of the Teutoburg Forest, 9 AD, in which Arminius destroyed the three legions of Varus - the event the monument commemorates, shown as the fighting itself.
- The Low-German caption
- A dialect version of Joseph Victor von Scheffel's comic student song about the battle, turning the national legend into local humour.
- Series letter A
- The issue is lettered; this note carries the letter A.
What was happening
Notgeld began in 1914 out of necessity: coin vanished into hoards within weeks of mobilisation and towns printed their own small change because the Reichsbank could not supply enough.
By 1920 it had become something else. The shortage was easing but the collector market was not, and a town could take real marks for paper it hoped would never be presented. So the municipalities commissioned illustrated notes, printed far beyond any local need and decorated with whatever the place was proud of. 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.
Horn, in the little principality of Lippe, sits just below the Teutoburg Forest, and its note reaches for the largest story in the neighbourhood. Its obverse carries the Hermannsdenkmal, the colossal monument to Arminius (Hermann) raised on a wooded hilltop near Detmold and finished in 1875: a copper figure with sword lifted, built on the belief that the forest nearby was where the Germanic tribes destroyed three Roman legions. The reverse shows that battle itself - the Varusschlacht of 9 AD, in which Arminius ambushed and annihilated the legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoburg Forest - under a comic Low-German caption drawn from Joseph Victor von Scheffel's student song: "Als die Römer frech geworden... met der grauden, frechen Schnuden" (roughly, "when the Romans got cheeky... with their great cheeky snout").
The note is series letter A, serial 119537, dated "Horn (Lippe), im Juni 1921," and was redeemable at the Amts-Sparkasse Horn until 31 December 1921.
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Amtsgemeinde Horn (Lippe), 1921 in the collection.
Print an album label for this note →
← → to move between notes