Types / 1921
25 Pfennig, Stadt Freiburg in Schlesien, 1921 (town panorama)
Notgeld der Stadt Freiburg i. Schles.
What was happening
By 1921 Notgeld had turned from wartime necessity into a collectors' market. Coin had vanished into hoards in 1914 and towns printed their own small change to replace it, but with the shortage easing an issuer could still take real marks for paper it hoped would never be redeemed. Towns, firms and clubs commissioned lithographed Serienscheine - sets printed far beyond local need and illustrated with whatever a place was proud of.
Freiburg in Schlesien - today Świebodzice in south-western Poland - is a small Lower Silesian town below the wooded heights of Schloss Fürstenstein (Książ), the great seat of the Hochberg family. It had held town rights since the 13th century and became a cloth and linen town: a large linen and cloth factory opened here in 1809 and at its height employed well over a thousand hands. The town issued a September 1921 set of 25- and 50-Pfennig notes printed by Grube & Schneider of Freiburg. Its sister notes include [[notgeld-freiburg-schlesien-25-pfennig-handwerk]], [[notgeld-freiburg-schlesien-25-pfennig-brand]] and [[notgeld-freiburg-schlesien-25-pfennig-weber]].
This 25-Pfennig note shows an ornate blue-and-gold panorama of the town captioned Freiburg i. Sch. - the kind of civic portrait that Serienscheine so often used to advertise the place that issued them.