50 Pfennig, Notgeld Hamburg, 1921 (Bürger-Militär)

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 note could be printed for no other purpose than to be sold to collectors. This one says so on its face - nur für Sammelzwecke herausgegeben, issued for collecting purposes only - a Hamburg Serienschein of city views and history, dated "Hamburg, 1. Juli 1921."

The obverse shows "Lombardsbrücke und Alster," the bridge carrying the road and railway across the neck between the Binnenalster and Außenalster, the lake at the heart of Hamburg. The reverse depicts the Hamburger Bürger-Militär - the Tambourmajor (drum-major) and his Tambours (drummers) of the old Hamburg citizens' militia. The Hamburg citizens' militia (Bürgergarde / Bürgermilitär) was a civic force of the city's own burghers, raised in the Napoleonic period and active through the nineteenth century - it turned out at the great fire of 1842 and in the revolution of 1848 - until it was dissolved in 1868, as Hamburg's separate military arrangements gave way to those of the North German Confederation. The note recalls its parade dress a half-century on.