25 Pfennig, Stadt Warin, 1922

By 1920 German Notgeld had outgrown its origins as stopgap small change and become a graphic genre. Towns commissioned lithographed Serienscheine in bright sets, printed well beyond any need, because collectors would buy them; a municipality could take hard marks for pretty paper it hoped would never be redeemed. The little Mecklenburg town of Warin, between Schwerin and Wismar, joined in with its Reutergeld der Stadt Warin.

The name honours Fritz Reuter (1810-1874), Mecklenburg's beloved Low German poet, and the notes wear their Plattdeutsch on their sleeve: each carries a dialect verse rather than a plain inscription. They are orange lithographs, issued by Der Rat der Stadt Warin and declared valid für den Geldverkehr innerhalb der Stadtgemeinde bis zum 31. Mai 1922. The set bears no serial numbers, only its design and its series marking.

This twenty-five-Pfennig note is built around two shields - the town arms with their bishop's crozier set beside a companion coat of arms - with a Low German verse worked into the design. The reverse shows a building beneath the caption Reutergeld Warin. It was printed, like the rest of the Warin set, by the Bärensprungsche Hofbuchdruckerei in Schwerin.