50 Pfennig, Sportvereinigung St. Georg Hamburg, 1921

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 clubs, firms and societies of every kind could commission decorative notes sold to collectors and well-wishers to raise money. This is one such piece: a voucher of the Sportvereinigung St. Georg, the sports section of the Hamburger Turnerschaft von 1816, one of the oldest gymnastics societies in Germany, founded in the city in 1816 in the wave of German Turnen that followed the Napoleonic wars. The note is dated "Hamburg,

1. September 1921" and was redeemable at the Hamburg banking house Möhle & Vollmer; the design is signed by the artist A. Mühlhan.

The obverse shows Saint George on horseback slaying the dragon, in a roundel, with the club's monogram "H.T.v.1816" in the corners - the knightly saint who gives the St. Georg district and the club its name. The reverse is a lively crowd at a Turnfest (gymnastics festival) under a Low-German motto read on the note as "...dat Ziel is overgahn und Hamborg wedder upperstahn" - roughly "the goal is passed, and Hamburg risen again," a note of civic recovery in the first hard years after the war.