25 Pfennig, Stadt Kitzingen, 1921

Notgeld - "emergency money" - began in 1914 when metal coin vanished into hoards and towns printed their own small change. By 1921 it had become a craze: municipalities commissioned beautifully lithographed Serienscheine, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of. Collectors paid real marks for notes the town hoped would never be redeemed, so selling them was itself a way of raising money.

Kitzingen am Main is a Franconian wine town in Lower Bavaria, on the Main east of Würzburg, in the heart of the Franconian vineyards. Its Notgeld, as one would expect, is all about wine. This 25-Pfennig note of 1 September 1921, signed by the first mayor (Der erste Bürgermeister), shows on its face a vintner holding up grapes over a wine barrel dated 1919, with the Bavarian white-and-blue lozenge arms and a legend praising the strength of the local wine; the reverse, which carries the serial number, shows a tower or monument with a verse touching on hunger and hard times.

It belongs with the town's other wine notes - the leaning-tower 50-Pfennig [[notgeld-kitzingen-50-pfennig]] and the town-silhouette [[notgeld-kitzingen-50-pfennig-stadtrat]] - lower in value but cut from the same Franconian, wine-soaked cloth.