50 Pfennig, Dorfgemeinde Oppurg, 1921 (the Türkenhof)

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 Serienscheine: lithographed sets, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated 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.

Oppurg is a village in Thuringia on the Orla, just below Pössneck, best known for its Wasserschloss. Its set of three notes shares one obverse - a sunburst behind the town arms - and differs in paper colour and reverse scene. The notes were printed at the Tageblatt press in Pössneck and dated "Oppurg, 1. Aug. 1921."

This 50 Pfennig value shows on its reverse the manor-house captioned "Türkenhof erb. 1519," reckoned the oldest building in the village. Local tradition ties it to Hans von Brandenstein, of the family that held Oppurg, with an inscription telling how he spent sixteen years in Turkey and three years a prisoner under Naples before coming home to build it - the kind of personal legend a Serienschein was made to carry. See the two companion notes, the [[notgeld-oppurg-50-pfennig-kirche]] and the [[notgeld-oppurg-75-pfennig-schlossturm]].