50 Pfennig, Stadt Lenzen an der Elbe, 1921 (die Burg)

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.

Lenzen is one of the oldest places in the Prignitz, a Wendish settlement on the Elbe first recorded in 929 - the year a Saxon army under the magnate Bernhard, in the reign of King Henry the Fowler, broke a Slavic relief force before the stronghold here and secured the Elbe frontier. The town dates itself from that first mention.

The reverse of this 50-Pfennig value shows the Burg Lenzen, the castle raised on a high mound above the marshes with its tall round tower. It is the counterpart to the other 50 of the set, the Herdbuch bull of [[notgeld-lenzen-50-pfennig]], and shares its face and set with the 75-Pfennig Eldenburg note, [[notgeld-lenzen-75-pfennig]].