1/2 Mark Spar- und Darlehnskassen-Verein

Oberdorla is a small village in Thuringia, and the Spar- und Darlehnskassen-Verein that issued this note was a rural cooperative savings and loan association — exactly the kind of local institution that flooded Germany with Notgeld from 1914 onward as small change became impossible to find. By 1918, coin hoarding and metal shortages had emptied tills across the country, and thousands of municipalities, firms, and cooperatives printed their own fractional emergency notes to keep commerce moving at the village level.

Half-mark denominations from minor cooperative issuers in Thuringia survive in far smaller quantities than town-issued Notgeld, simply because fewer were printed and redemption records were rarely kept.