75 Pfennig, Gemeinde Steinfeld in Angeln, 1921 (housing-shortage umbrella)

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 in the years when Germany's currency was dying.

This is Steinfeld on the Angeln peninsula of Schleswig - the Amt Süderbrarup, Kreis Schleswig-Flensburg - and not the larger Steinfeld in Oldenburg. The distinction matters here: Angeln lies just below the new Danish border fixed by the Schleswig plebiscites of 1920, when central Schleswig voted by about four to one to stay German while the north went to Denmark. A note made in this corner in 1921 is a note made in a freshly redrawn borderland. The face carries an elaborate composite coat of arms and a windmill-and-town silhouette behind the title; the back turns the whole set to the post-war housing shortage, under the plea Beschirm uns Gott vor Wohnungsnot! - "God shield us from the housing shortage." Valid to 30 November 1921, signed by P. Sebriel and E. Tellgaarde.

Note for cataloguers: this collection also holds an "eagle" Steinfeld series currently filed under locality 'Steinfeld' (Oldenburg) - see [[notgeld-steinfeld-75-pfennig-eagle]] and [[notgeld-steinfeld-1-mark-eagle]] - whose motto Wir wollen keine Dänen sein / Wir wollen Deutsche bleiben belongs to the Schleswig plebiscite, odd matter for an Oldenburg village. That raises an open question, not a conclusion: the eagle series may in fact also be this Steinfeld in Angeln rather than the Oldenburg one. Left flagged for review, not asserted.