25 Pfennig, Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Ministry, 1922

Mecklenburg-Schwerinsches Staatsministerium - 25 Pfennig

common

What was happening

German Notgeld is usually a town's business. This one is a state's.

Mecklenburg-Schwerin was a grand duchy until 1918 and then a Free State within the Weimar Republic, with Schwerin as its capital and a population under seven hundred thousand. Its State Ministry issued this 25-Pfennig note in series, valid to 1 May 1922, redeemable at the state treasury - the Renterei - and at every bank in the state and their agencies.

That distinguishes it from the Serienscheine that made German Notgeld famous. There is no local legend, no dialect joke, no fashionable woodcut: an engraved border, a plain numeral, the state arms, four ministers' signatures and a serial number in red. It is the small change of a government that happened to be small, and it is printed by the former court printer at Schwerin, which is precisely who a state ministry would use.

The date matters. May 1922 is before the catastrophic phase of the German inflation - a 25-Pfennig note still meant something when this was issued, and would mean nothing eighteen months later, when the same ministry's successors were dealing in billions.

Symbology

Serie A and a red serial: Individually numbered in red, and the reverse warns that a note whose number cannot be read will not be paid. The number is the note's identity - this is accounted paper, not a souvenir.
The arms of Mecklenburg: The bull's head of Mecklenburg above the denomination panel, the state's emblem since the thirteenth century and still on the arms of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern today.
Four signatures: Members of the State Ministry, printed as facsimiles. A state ministry rather than a mayor: the note sits between a town's scrip and a Reichsbank note, and is guaranteed by a government.
An engraved border, no local scene: Where the collector-driven Serienscheine of 1921 put legends and landscapes on their notes, this one uses the conventional guilloche of real money. The state was not selling these to collectors; it was trying to make change.

Rarity

A state rather than a municipal issue, printed in series with individual serial numbers and widely saved. Catalogued in Grabowski's handbook of the German states' paper money; the reference number is not yet confirmed against it.

25 Pfennig, Mecklenburg-Schwerin State Ministry, 1922

What was happening

2 copies in the collection