25 Pfennig, Stadt Freiburg in Schlesien, 1921 (the weavers)

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 Schloss Fürstenstein (Książ). It was above all a weaving town: hand spinning and weaving of linen and cloth had long been a cottage trade across Silesia, and a mechanised linen and cloth factory opened in Freiburg in 1809, eventually employing well over a thousand people. The rise of the mills was also the slow death of the independent hand-weaver, a theme that haunted Silesian memory and art.

This 25-Pfennig note turns on that theme. It shows three aged weavers seated with a clock, factory chimneys smoking behind them - the old hand-workers overtaken by the mechanised mills. It belongs to the town's September 1921 set printed by Grube & Schneider; its sister notes include [[notgeld-freiburg-schlesien-25-pfennig-handwerk]], [[notgeld-freiburg-schlesien-25-pfennig-stadtansicht]] and [[notgeld-freiburg-schlesien-25-pfennig-brand]].