1/2 Mark

Kolberg's municipal Notgeld program began in 1917 as small-denomination coins vanished from circulation — hoarded by a public that had stopped trusting the war economy. The Magistrat issued these fractional notes under emergency authority granted to German municipalities that year, filling a gap the Reichsbank was unwilling to address at the pfennig level.

Kolberg itself — a fortified Baltic port — would later enter history for an entirely different reason: its catastrophic siege in early 1945. The 1917 notes predate that by nearly three decades, issued when the city was still a functioning Prussian resort town with a functioning civic government.