50 Pfennig, Stadt Detmold, 1920 (Hermann)

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.

Detmold was the capital of the little principality of Lippe, and on the wooded ridge above it stands the Hermannsdenkmal, the colossal statue of Arminius finished in 1875 to mark the spot where, by tradition, the Cherusci under Hermann destroyed three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. The reverse of this note is a black silhouette of that battle - Ploetzlich aus des Waldes Duester brachen kampfhaft die Cherusker... fuer Koenig und Vaterland - with the Lippe rose in the arms on the obverse. Printed, like several notes in this collection, by R. Dulce of Glauchau; serial 711294, dated 2 August 1920.