25 Pfennig, District of Coesfeld, 1918

This is Kriegsnotgeld - war emergency money, not the collectors' Notgeld of 1920-21 that followed it. Within weeks of mobilisation in 1914 silver and nickel coin vanished from circulation into hoards, and the Reichsbank could not supply enough small notes to replace it. Towns, districts and firms filled the gap themselves, on their own authority, redeemable against their own treasuries.

These early issues look like what they are: functional paper, serially numbered, with a validity tied not to a date but to the end of a war nobody could date.

Coesfeld is a district in the Muensterland, flat farming country in western Westphalia. Its war money is district-wide, numbered, and expires three months after the redemption call - signed by the district committee rather than a mayor.

The face carries a single figure on a dark ground: a heavy-set countryman in a broad hat with a scythe over his shoulder, drawn by Heinz and Schiestl in the same hand that signed Hammelburg's notes. He is not decoration. In 1918 the Muensterland's value to Germany was what it could grow, and the district put the man who grew it on its money.