75 Pfennig, Dorfgemeinde Oppurg, 1921 (the castle tower)

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 is the 75 Pfennig value, the top of the set. Its reverse shows the surviving castle tower, captioned "Schloßturm aus dem 15. Jahrhundert" - a round tower from the fifteenth century, from the older Brandenstein fortification that stood before the present baroque Wasserschloss - with a hunter and an Auerhahn, a capercaillie at its courtship display, and a verse on the bird's spring courting. See the two companion notes, the [[notgeld-oppurg-50-pfennig-kirche]] and the [[notgeld-oppurg-50-pfennig-tuerkenhof]].