Types / 1920
10 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920
What was happening
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.
Not a town but a cooperative bank - the Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge e.G.m.b.H. - issuing a ten-pfennig Anweisung good within the bank's own district, dated the last day of 1920.
The village is famous for one afternoon. On 27 August 1626 Tilly destroyed the army of Christian IV of Denmark here, and the note shows the king's flight: horsemen in full career across a green field with the village behind them.
