Brehna is a small town in Saxony-Anhalt, and its decision to issue notgeld in 1921 places this squarely in the second wave of German emergency money — by then less about acute coin shortage and more about local pride and the collector trade that had grown up around the phenomenon. Many municipalities were effectively printing for philatelists at that point, knowing full well the notes would never see a shop counter.
H. Schiebel of Bitterfeld was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist currency house. The inclusion of a watermark on such a low-denomination piece from a minor issuer is worth noting — an unusual security measure for a town this size.
Brehna is a small town in Saxony-Anhalt, and its decision to issue notgeld in 1921 places this squarely in the second wave of German emergency money — by then less about acute coin shortage and more about local pride and the collector trade that had grown up around the phenomenon. Many municipalities were effectively printing for philatelists at that point, knowing full well the notes would never see a shop counter.
H. Schiebel of Bitterfeld was a regional commercial printer, not a specialist currency house. The inclusion of a watermark on such a low-denomination piece from a minor issuer is worth noting — an unusual security measure for a town this size.