50 Pfennig, Stadt Annaburg, 1921 (liqueur)

Notgeld - "emergency money" - began in 1914 when metal coin vanished into hoards and towns printed their own small change. By 1920 it had become a collector's craze: municipalities commissioned Serienscheine, lithographed sets printed far beyond local need and illustrated with legends, landmarks and jokes in dialect, sold to collectors for real marks the town hoped never to repay.

Annaburg lies in the Elbe lowlands of the former Prussian Province of Saxony, today Saxony-Anhalt. It grew around the electoral hunting seat of Lochau, whose Renaissance castle was rebuilt in the 1570s for the Elector August and his wife Anna of Denmark; the town took her name. Electress Anna is remembered for the court distillery, infirmary and apothecary she is said to have established in the castle - which gives this note its punchline.

The six notes of the 1921 series share a front (fruit-tree arms, Städtlein Annaburg 1921, red numerals, parish redemption promise, serial) and differ in the silhouette back. This 50-pfennig note shows a heraldic shield or crest in silhouette with a small hanging figure, over a verse that runs, as best it can be read off the Fraktur, that Mother Anna reached for the Sorgenbrecher - the "breaker of cares" - and ends on the old saw Das ist ein Spruch von alters her, wer Sorgen hat hat auch Likör: "it is an old saying - whoever has cares has liqueur too." The whole joke turns on the near-rhyme of Sorgen (cares) and Likör, tying back to Anna's famous distillery. Its companions in the collection are the tavern note [[notgeld-annaburg-50-pfennig-wirtschaft]] and the lantern note [[notgeld-annaburg-50-pfennig-laterne]], with the 25-pfennig scenes [[notgeld-annaburg-25-pfennig-schloss]], [[notgeld-annaburg-25-pfennig-wald]] and [[notgeld-annaburg-25-pfennig-steingut]].