5 Mark, Stadt Oelde, 1921

By 1920 German Notgeld had stopped being a response to a coin shortage and become a collector's product. Towns, districts and firms commissioned decorative Serienscheine - lithographed sets printed far beyond any local need and sold to collectors, 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.

Oelde is a small town in the Muensterland of Westphalia. This 5-Mark note - a high value, a sign of how far prices had already run by the summer of 1921 - carries the town arms (a crescent and star beneath a mural crown) and the undertaking of the Gemeindevorstand that the town will redeem it, void a month after it is called in. The reverse is a moonlit night scene with a Low-German verse. Dated 1 July 1921.