50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Steinfeld in Angeln, 1920 (Up ewig ungedeelt)

Notgeld ("emergency money") began in 1914, when coin vanished into hoards and towns printed their own small change. This is an early note, dated 30 July 1920 and good for a year to 30 June 1921, issued by the Gemeinde Steinfeld, Kreis Schleswig.

The town is Steinfeld in Angeln - a parish on the Angeln peninsula of Schleswig, between the Schlei and the Flensburg Fjord - and not the larger Steinfeld in Oldenburg. Angeln lies just below the Danish border drawn by the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites, and the note is openly patriotic: the front carries a portrait with crossed flags and the line Gutschein über Fünfzig Pfennig / Up ewig ungedeelt - the old Schleswig-Holstein motto "forever undivided", from the 1460 Treaty of Ribe in which the estates pledged that Schleswig and Holstein should never be parted. The other face shows a knight or horseman and the issuer line Gemeinde Steinfeld Kr. Schleswig.

Note for cataloguers: this collection also holds an "eagle" Steinfeld series currently filed under the Oldenburg locality 'Steinfeld' - see [[notgeld-steinfeld-75-pfennig-eagle]] and [[notgeld-steinfeld-1-mark-eagle]] - whose motto Wir wollen keine Dänen sein / Wir wollen Deutsche bleiben belongs to the Schleswig plebiscite, odd matter for an Oldenburg village. That raises an open question, not a conclusion: the eagle series may in fact belong to this Steinfeld in Angeln rather than the Oldenburg one. This note, by contrast, is unambiguously Steinfeld in Angeln - it names Kreis Schleswig and carries the Schleswig- Holstein motto. See also the related [[notgeld-steinfeld-angeln-50-pfennig]]. The point is flagged for review, not asserted.