75 Pfennig, Kreis Diepholz, 1921 (Barnstorf)

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.

In August 1921 the district of Diepholz issued a second, far more lavish series than its plain 1920 notes: full-colour sheets drawn by C. Joerres and printed by Casten & Suhling of Bremen, each one portraying a different place in the Kreis - Barnstorf, Lemfoerde and the rest - with a Low-German verse. The Gutschein fuer den Kreis Diepholz, the serial and the signatures of the Kreissparkasse sit on the obverse, over the district arms.

This note shows Die Kirche zu Barnstorf, the church at Barnstorf, over a Low-German verse and a procession of parishioners, with the old emblems of gallows, wheel and court along the margins. Serial A 16975.