25 Pfennig, Stadt Krempe

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.

Krempe in Holstein was a fortress town - Christian IV of Denmark walled it in the 1620s, and Wallenstein took it in 1627. The note shows the water gate with a drawbridge and ships beyond, under the Low German line wa wi tohoop hebt dahn, het üns noch nüms wat dahn - what we have done together, no one has yet undone.