50 Pfennig, Bankhaus Jansen, Westerland auf Sylt, 1920

Notgeld - "emergency money" - was not only a municipal affair. When small coin vanished and the Reichsbank could not supply enough change, private firms, banks, spas and resorts issued their own low-value notes too, promising to honour them against their own funds. Legally many of these were little cheques or drafts (Schecks) rather than public currency, but in daily use they passed as cash.

Westerland is the main resort town of Sylt, the long North Frisian island off the Schleswig coast, famous for its beaches and bathing and reached across the Wattenmeer. This 50-Pfennig note was issued in 1920 not by the municipality but by a local private bank, the Bankhaus Jansen, and is worded as a draft on itself: "Das Bankhaus Jansen, Westerland, wolle zahlen gegen diesen Scheck ..." - the bank undertakes to pay the bearer against the cheque. The serial number is on the face; it was printed by Seimar Bayer of Berlin.

The reverse carries a sailing-ship emblem and the North-Frisian sailor's toast "Rum - hart - klaar - Kimming". The four words run together like a creed of the coast: rum; firm or steady; clear; and Kimming, the Low-German word for the horizon where sea meets sky. It is the maritime flavour that resort notes like this traded on.