50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Mülsen St. Jakob, 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 an issuer could take real marks for paper it hoped would never be presented. So towns, firms and clubs 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 trade, a joke in dialect. The result is the most inventive body of graphic design in the history of paper money, made in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

Muelsen St. Jakob is one of a string of villages - St. Niclas, St. Micheln and the rest - that today make up the municipality of Muelsen in the Zwickau hills of western Saxony. In 1921 it lay under the Glauchau district, which is why its Notgeld was printed in Glauchau. The note was issued on 2 September 1921 and good only to the end of that month.

The back belongs to a set of dialect vignettes of two men in a tavern: here one, having looked too deep into his glass, has spat at the other. Small-change money as village comedy.