5 Pfennig, Stadt Lyck, 1920

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.

Lyck called itself Masurens Hauptstadt, the capital of Masuria, and its 1920 notes exist to record a vote. On 11 July 1920 the Allies held a plebiscite across Masuria and Warmia: stay with East Prussia, or join Poland. The note states the local result on its face - in the town of Lyck, 8,339 voted for Germany and only 7 for Poland.

Lyck is Ełk in Poland today. Its German population left or was expelled in 1945, and the lake on the reverse is the same lake.