50 Pfennig, Stadt Weimar, 1921 (Goethe — "unendliche Kette")
Notgeld der Stadt Weimar
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This copy
- Accession
- OM-00790
- 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
- 101.7 × 71.1 mm (±0.5, from the scan)
- Themes
- NotgeldSerienscheinWeimar RepublicThuringiaGoetheSchillerPoetry
The type
- Type
- 50 Pfennig, Stadt Weimar, 1921 (Goethe — "unendliche Kette")
- Printer
- Dietsch & Brückner, Weimar
- Rarity
- common
Symbology
- Portrait of the elder Goethe (octagonal, grey and red)
- The obverse bears an engraved bust of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in old age, set in an eight-sided frame, with the note's serial number. Goethe is the presiding genius of Weimar, where he spent most of his life in the service of Duke Carl August.
- Reverse: allegory of life and death, with Goethe's verse
- Putti play around a skull and a scythe - the emblems of death encircling new life. The verse is from Goethe's hymn "Grenzen der Menschheit" (c. 1781): "Ein kleiner Ring begrenzt unser Leben, und viele Geschlechter reihen sich dauernd an ihres Daseins unendliche Kette." (A small ring bounds our life, and many generations string themselves endlessly onto the chain of their being.)
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 Serienscheine: lithographed sets, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - a legend, a famous son, a battle, 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.
No German town had more to put on its money than Weimar. Goethe lived here from 1775 until his death in 1832 and Schiller from 1799 until his in 1805; between them they made the little Thuringian residence-town the capital of German letters, and the bronze pair by Ernst Rietschel still stand hand in hand before the theatre where, in 1919, the National Assembly had just written the constitution that gave the Republic its name. This 50-Pfennig set - lithographed by Dietsch & Brückner of Weimar and dated "Weimar, den 1. März 1921" - makes the whole series an anthology: each note carries an engraved portrait of one of the two poets on the face and, on the back in its own colour, an allegorical scene paired with a verse.
This note shows the aged Goethe in an octagonal frame, printed in grey and red. The reverse is a meditation on mortality - putti at play about a skull and a scythe - under lines from Goethe's hymn Grenzen der Menschheit, which measure the single, bounded life against the endless chain of the generations. Its companion Goethe notes are [[notgeld-weimar-50-pfennig-goethe-edel]] and [[notgeld-weimar-50-pfennig-goethe-krieg]]; the Schiller faces of the set are [[notgeld-weimar-50-pfennig-schiller-freunde]], [[notgeld-weimar-50-pfennig-schiller-schuldbuch]] and [[notgeld-weimar-50-pfennig-schiller-hoffnung]].
This account belongs to the type, not this copy — it is shared by every 50 Pfennig, Stadt Weimar, 1921 (Goethe — "unendliche Kette") in the collection.
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