50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Suchsdorf, 1921 (1864)

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.

Suchsdorf, now a northern suburb of Kiel on the bank of the Kiel Canal, issued its 1921 Notgeld in the aftermath of the Schleswig plebiscite, and the set is as nationalist as any in this collection. The notes carry Schleswig-Holstein's lions and the blunt slogans of a border that had just been drawn - the kind of agitation money that passed for small change along the new frontier. Valid until 31 August 1921.

The pictorial side shows the Danes falling back over the Levensau bridge across the old Eider canal as the Prussians approach in 1864; the obverse carries the Schleswig-Holstein arms on an oak and the Low-German line Steit unse Mark im Kurs ok slecht, dat Mark im duetschen Arm ist echt - though our mark stands low, the marrow in the German arm is sound.