50 Pfennig, Stadt Magdeburg, 1921

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.

And this is what changed. Magdeburg's 1921 note is one of the most startling objects in the whole of German Notgeld: a flat red and green design of jagged, splintered forms, the Magdeburg Reiter on the face captioned Otto I. erbaut Magdeburg, and on the reverse a city of cranes, aeroplanes and scaffolding under the line dereinst in ungehemmtem Schaffen werde Neu-Magdeburg zur schönsten Stadt der Erde - one day, in unhindered work, let New Magdeburg become the most beautiful city on earth.

This is Bruno Taut's (1880–1938) Magdeburg. As city architect from 1921 he had the façades of the old town painted in violent colour, and the note belongs to exactly that moment.