50 Pfennig, Stadt Warin, 1922

German Notgeld had, by the early 1920s, become a collectors craze as much as a currency. Towns printed lithographed Serienscheine in colourful sets, far beyond any local need, and sold them for real money to album-builders across the country. The result is a vast body of inventive paper money made by small places in the years the mark was dying. Warin, a modest Mecklenburg town between Schwerin and Wismar, issued its own in 1922 as the Reutergeld der Stadt Warin.

The name salutes Fritz Reuter (1810-1874), the Mecklenburg poet who wrote in Low German, and the notes duly carry Plattdeutsch verses in place of ordinary legends. They are orange lithographs put out by Der Rat der Stadt Warin and declared good für den Geldverkehr innerhalb der Stadtgemeinde bis zum 31. Mai 1922, with no serial numbers - only the design and the series letter identify them.

This fifty-Pfennig note sets a large 50 PF beside a hanging lantern and a Low German verse. The reverse turns to a horse-and-shield scene under the caption Reutergeld der Stadt Warin. It was printed, with the rest of the set, by the Bärensprungsche Hofbuchdruckerei in Schwerin, the court printing house of the Mecklenburg capital.