25 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 small value is [[notgeld-fuerstenberg-mecklenburg-reutergeld-10-pfennig]].

This is the 25 Pfennig of the Stadt Fürstenberg, issued by Der Magistrat and valid until 31 May 1922. The pictorial face reads Reutergeld der Stadt Fürstenberg and shows the Schloss with the value "25"; 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; its Schloss, a Baroque palace raised in 1741-52 for Duchess Dorothea Sophie as a dowager seat of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz dukes, is the building shown on this note. (It should not be confused with the Swabian Fürstenberg or the Oder-side Fürstenberg.)