Old Money Registry

Types / 1921

50 Pfennig, Spar- und Darlehnskasse Oberheldrungen, 1921 (the Anna mine panorama)

Jubiläums-Gutschein, Ländliche Spar- u. Darlehnskasse Oberheldrungen u. Umgegend

common Grabowski/Mehl 995.1

What was happening

Oberheldrungen is a village by the Kyffhäuser in what is now northern Thuringia; in 1921 it lay in the Prussian Province of Saxony. Its rural savings-and-loan cooperative — the Ländliche Spar- und Darlehnskasse Oberheldrungen und Umgegend, a Raiffeisen-type credit union founded on 20 March 1896 — marked its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1921 with a set of six 50-Pfennig Jubiläums-Gutscheine, emergency notes that doubled as a keepsake of the jubilee.

Every note shares the same ornate Jugendstil front: the cooperative's monogram, three oval signature stamps (the middle one reading Gültig bis 1.12.1921), the anniversary dates 20.3.1896–20.3.1921, and the printer's line "Druck: Adolf Forker, Leipzig". The value, 50 Pfennig, is carried in the border rather than as a large central numeral. The six reverses each show a local scene or figure with a verse in the Thuringian dialect.

This note's reverse is a panorama of Oberheldrungen itself, captioned as the village "mit Kalischacht Anna, mit Harras und dem uralten Fürstengrab 'Kessel'". The Kalischacht Anna was the local potash mine, its shaft sunk from 1902 and worked until the industry's forced closures in 1924 — in 1921 a fresh source of village pride; the Harras is a neighbouring hamlet, and the "Kessel" an ancient burial mound on the ridge. Here the village is shown under a red evening sky, the mine's chimneys smoking beside the church.

1 copy in the collection