50 Pfennig, Gemeinde Tiefurt, 1921 (the park)

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. 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.

Tiefurt, a village on the Ilm just outside Weimar, became in 1781 the summer retreat of the widowed Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar, who made its manor and grounds into a celebrated Musenhof - a court of the muses around Goethe, Wieland and Herder. The landscaped park along the Ilm, laid out in the free English manner, was the setting for the open-air theatricals and literary gatherings of her circle; Goethe's Singspiel "Die Fischerin" was first performed there in 1782.

This note is one of a set that share the same green front - "Gemeinde Tiefurt / Notgeld", a profile medallion and the Goethean legend "Der Zettel hier ist 50 Pf wert" - printed by the Wiedemann press in Saalfeld. Its back is a green woodcut of the Tiefurt park, a different view from the monument note. See the companion notes, the [[notgeld-tiefurt-25-pfennig-park]], the [[notgeld-tiefurt-50-pfennig-denkmal]] and the [[notgeld-tiefurt-75-pfennig-wieland]].