1/2 Mark Horst an der Emscher

Horst an der Emscher was a small industrial commune in the Ruhr, absorbed into Gelsenkirchen in 1928 — which makes its independent municipal Notgeld issues a minor administrative footnote that most collectors overlook. The Sparkasse series of 1917 falls squarely in the first wave of German emergency coinage shortages, when the Reichsbank's brass and copper had vanished into wartime hoarding and small change simply stopped circulating in working-class mining towns like this one.

Selmar Bayer of Berlin printed a significant volume of Notgeld for small Prussian municipalities during 1916–18, often to near-identical specifications.