25 Pfennig, Stadt-Sparkasse Bielefeld, 1917

Notgeld began in 1914 out of necessity: coin vanished into hoards within weeks of mobilisation, and the metal itself was wanted for the war, so town treasuries and municipal savings banks printed their own small change because the Reichsbank could not supply enough. This wartime emergency money is Kriegsnotgeld, the first and most functional kind, made to circulate rather than to be collected.

This is one of those pieces: a 25-Pfennig note of the Stadt-Sparkasse Bielefeld, the municipal savings bank of the Westphalian linen town, issued for the war year 1917 and redeemable until 1920. Bielefeld would later become one of the most celebrated of all Notgeld issuers, famous above all for the linen and silk Stoffgeld of its 1921 jubilee (see [[notgeld-bielefeld-25-mark-stoffgeld]]); but this earlier note belongs to the plain, necessary currency of the war.

The obverse is an ornate red-and-black frame around the large value "25" and the Stadt-Sparkasse legend. The reverse is more striking: a black grotesque mask or devil's head on red, over a list of the names of the city's magistrate, inscribed "Für das Kriegsnotjahr 1917" - "for the year of wartime need 1917."