50 Pfennig, Stadt Treffurt, 1921 (the old town)

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.

Treffurt is a small town on the Werra, at the old meeting-point of Thuringia, Hesse and Saxony, and is known today above all for the many restored half-timbered houses of its old town. This note takes that townscape as its subject.

The note is one of a set of 50-Pfennig Serienscheine that share a common front - the green town arms and the words "Notgeld / 50 Pfg" - and differ in the coloured town view on the back. Here the back shows a half-timbered street or alley of the old town. See the companion notes, the [[notgeld-treffurt-50-pfennig-werra]], the [[notgeld-treffurt-50-pfennig-normannstein]] and the [[notgeld-treffurt-50-pfennig-kirche]].