25 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920

Anweisung der Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge

common

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.

Lutter am Barenberge is a village in the Brunswick country at the northern edge of the Harz, and its whole claim on history is one afternoon. On 27 August 1626 Tilly, commanding the army of the Catholic League, destroyed the Danish army of Christian IV here. The defeat ended Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War, broke the Protestant cause in Lower Saxony and opened northern Germany to the imperial armies.

The notes were issued not by the village but by its cooperative bank - the Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge e.G.m.u.H. - on 30 December 1920, good only für den Wirkungskreis dieser Bank und Sparkasse: within the working area of this bank and savings bank. That is a narrower circulation than any town boundary in this collection.

All three were drawn by F. Jüttner, who also drew the Braunschweig transport company's note and the Brocken innkeeper's voucher. Between them they run the battle as a sequence: the rout, the victor, and the aftermath.

This is the 25 Pfennig, captioned Tilly nach der Schlacht bei Lutter a. Barenberge. It shows Tilly riding forward through the wreck of the field in a wide-brimmed hat, pikes and banners behind him and the village church on the skyline, cut in green and red.

Symbology

The scene: Captioned *Tilly nach der Schlacht bei Lutter a. Barenberge*: Tilly riding forward through the wreck of the field in a wide-brimmed hat, pikes and banners behind him and the village church on the skyline, cut in green and red.
Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly: The Catholic League's commander, already sixty-seven at Lutter and the most feared soldier in Germany. He stormed Magdeburg five years later and died in 1632 of a wound taken against the Swedes. The note gives him the victory without much triumph in it - he rides over his own dead as well as the enemy's.
A bank's own district: Not a town's money. The note is good only within the area this one cooperative bank and its savings bank served, which is narrower than any municipal boundary in the collection.
F. Jüttner: Signed at the lower left of every face. The same hand drew the Braunschweig motor company's note and the Brocken voucher, so the artist can be followed across three very different issuers here.
Corner letters F and J: Small letters in the lower corners of the reverse, on all three denominations - print-run marks rather than a picture series.
30 December 1920: All three dated the same day, at the end of a year in which the mark had already lost most of what it had left. A village bank commemorating a seventeenth-century battle while the currency it was denominated in came apart.

Rarity

German municipal Notgeld survives in very large quantities - much of it went straight from the printer into an album and has never been folded. Catalogued by town in Grabowski and Mehl; the reference number for this note is not yet confirmed.

25 Pfennig, Volksbank zu Lutter am Barenberge, 1920

What was happening

1 copy in the collection