25 Pfennig, Stadt Zeulenroda, 1921 (the fire)

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 illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - or whatever it had suffered.

Zeulenroda, a weaving and button-making town in the Vogtland corner of eastern Thuringia (the old principality of Reuss), had known its share of disaster, and its 1921 notes turn that memory into imagery. The notes share a front carrying the town arms (a crowned lion's head over a brick wall) in an oval and the verse "O Mensch, betracht mich eine Weil, das Notgeld geht mit mir zu Ende, die Not noch nicht - tust du dein Teil, daß auch des Landes Not sich wende!" ("O man, consider me a while: the Notgeld ends with me, the hardship not yet - do your part, that the land's hardship too may turn").

This 25-Pfennig value shows on its back a Feuersnot - a town in flames - the memory of fire set against the "need" of the inflation years. It was printed by Otto Henning in nearby Greiz. The companion [[notgeld-zeulenroda-75-pfennig]] carries the matching flood (Wassernot) scene; see also the [[notgeld-zeulenroda-10-pfennig]] and the [[notgeld-zeulenroda-1-pfennig]].