50 Pfennig, Stadt Colditz, 1921 (Mulde valley)

Notgeld - "emergency money" - began in 1914 when metal coin vanished into hoards and German towns printed their own small change. By 1920 it had become a collector's craze: municipalities commissioned Serienscheine, lithographed sets printed far beyond local need and illustrated with the town's landmarks, legends and views, sold to collectors for real marks the town hoped never to repay.

Colditz is a Saxon town on the river Mulde between Leipzig and Chemnitz, below a Renaissance castle crowning a rocky spur above the water. The wooded valley of the Mulde was the town's great scenic asset, and the 1921 Serienschein returns to it more than once, setting the castle against the river.

The notes share a cream-and-red front - Gutschein über 50 Pf, the Colditz castle-gate arms with their lion, Stadt Colditz Sachsen and the validity line Gültig bis auf Widerruf - and differ in the scene on the back. This note gives an oval view of the castle above the Mulde valley, with a Low-German invitation to come and see it - Colditz, die liebliche ... komm herzu - the kind of verse that courted the collector-tourist as much as the citizen. Its siblings in the collection are the Swedish-war note [[notgeld-colditz-50-pfennig-schweden]], the Hussite note [[notgeld-colditz-50-pfennig-husiten]], the stoneware note [[notgeld-colditz-50-pfennig-steingut]], the town-hall note [[notgeld-colditz-50-pfennig-rathaus]] and the tower note [[notgeld-colditz-50-pfennig-heimatturm]].