25 Pfennig, Bad Sulza, 1921 (Sonnenburg)

By 1920 German Notgeld had stopped being a response to a coin shortage and become a collector's product. Towns, districts and firms commissioned decorative Serienscheine - lithographed sets printed far beyond any local need and sold to collectors, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of: a legend, a famous son, a battle, a trade, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

Bad Sulza in Thuringia is a brine spa, its baths fed by the salt springs that once supplied the Saline. The note's gentle joke is at the cure's expense: the reverse shows invalids in wheeled sick-chairs with the verse Der Aermste hier im Krankenstuhl sieht offen schon den Hoellenpfuhl; Haelt er nur wenige Wochen durch, klimmt er empor zur Sonnenburg - stick out a few weeks of the water and even the sickest will climb up to the Sonnenburg, the ruin shown on the obverse. Valid until 31 December 1922.