75 Pfennig, Neustadt in Holstein, 1921 (political laboratory)

Notgeld ("emergency money") began in 1914 out of necessity but by 1920-21 had become a collector craze: towns issued lithographed Serienscheine far beyond any local need and sold them to collectors for real marks. Neustadt in Holstein, a small Baltic harbour town on the Lübeck Bay, used its series to make a political point.

The whole Neustadt set is a patriotic Schleswig-Holstein commentary on the 1920 Schleswig plebiscites, which under the Treaty of Versailles let the old duchy vote on the Danish- German border and transferred North Schleswig to Denmark. This 75 Pfennig value belongs with the town's other patriotic notes: [[notgeld-neustadt-holstein-25-pfennig]] (the "Up ewig ungedeelt" / Christian I note), [[notgeld-neustadt-holstein-25-pfennig-patriot]] (the satirical "patriot" boy), [[notgeld-neustadt-holstein-25-pfennig-teilung]] and [[notgeld-neustadt-holstein-50-pfennig]].

The front uses a diagonal-cross layout framing an interior scene captioned Das politische Laboratorium ("the political laboratory") - a satirical dig at the backroom politicking over the border question. The back shows a castle-and-town scene with mounted figures beneath a verse in Low German. It was valid until 31 July 1921 and signed by Bürgermeister Rehr and Stadtverordnetenvorsteher Ehlers.