10 Pfennig, Stadt Fürstenberg in Mecklenburg, 1921 (Reutergeld)

Reutergeld was Mecklenburg's own version of the Notgeld collector craze. Around 1921 a number of Mecklenburg towns issued Serienscheine whose texts quoted the Low-German (Plattdeutsch) poet Fritz Reuter (1810-1874), the region's most beloved writer, born at Stavenhagen. The Stiftung Mecklenburg describes Reutergeld as a purely collectible issue without real payment function, spreading Reuter's dialect lines as a piece of regional self-advertisement and early tourism promotion; the companion 25 Pfennig is [[notgeld-fuerstenberg-mecklenburg-reutergeld-25-pfennig]].

This is the 10 Pfennig of the Stadt Fürstenberg, issued by Der Magistrat and valid until 31 May 1922. The pictorial face reads Reutergeld - Stadt Fürstenberg i. M. and shows a town building in an oval with the value "10 Pf"; the other face carries a landscape and a Plattdeutsch Reuter verse.

"Fürstenberg in Mecklenburg" is Fürstenberg/Havel, today a small town in northern Brandenburg but in 1921 the southernmost corner of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. It is a Wasserstadt ("water town") built on islands among the Röblinsee, Baalensee and Schwedtsee, below a Baroque ducal palace raised in 1741-52 as a dowager seat of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz dukes. (The town should not be confused with the Swabian Fürstenberg or the Oder-side Fürstenberg.)