50 Pfennig, Kreis Dramburg, 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.

Dramburg was a district town in eastern Pomerania, now Drawsko Pomorskie in Poland. Its note tells a joke on itself: im Dramburger Land gibts wie bekannt ein Institut: die Schleifmühle genannt. Wer unsere Not noch nicht begriffen, dem wird hier der Verstand geschliffen - there is an institution hereabouts called the grinding mill, and anyone who has not yet grasped our plight gets his wits sharpened there.