10 Pfennig, Markt Berchtesgaden, 1920

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, printed far beyond any local need, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of - a legend, a famous son, a battle, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made by places with a few thousand inhabitants, in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

Berchtesgaden lived on salt. The mine under the Salzberg had been worked since 1517 and was the reason the place existed, and the note says so in a couplet: trüg unser reicher Salzberg ein Erz in seiner Erden, müßt nicht der arme Nickel jetzt auch papieren werden - if our rich salt mountain bore an ore in its earth, poor Nickel would not have to turn to paper too.