50 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 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.

The district of Diepholz issued this in September 1920, redeemable at the district savings bank three months after the call. It is printed in a single ink - the note is found both in red and in a blue-green printing - with a border of Celtic-looking interlace, and the reverse shows the Schloss, a moated brick castle of the counts of Diepholz, who held the marshland here until 1585. It was printed by Gebrueder Jaenecke of Hannover.