50 Pfennig, Stadt Zerbst, 1921

By 1920 German Notgeld had stopped being a response to a coin shortage and become a collector's product. Towns, districts and firms commissioned decorative Serienscheine - lithographed sets printed far beyond any local need and sold to collectors, illustrated with whatever the place was proud of: a legend, a famous son, a battle, a trade, a joke in dialect. 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.

Zerbst was a residence town of the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst - the home where Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst grew up before she went to Russia and became Catherine the Great. Its 50-Pfennig note shows the arms of the town, a red wall of five towers, flanked by the Anhalt bear and the Saxon shield, with two views of the Frauentor gate as it stood around 1750. Printed by Louis Koch of Halberstadt; dated 1 July 1921, serial 61107.