20 Pfennig - Lichtenfels Vierzehnheiligen

Lichtenfels issued this aluminium Notgeld piece in 1921, at a moment when postwar inflation had so thoroughly disrupted Germany's small-change supply that hundreds of municipalities were forced to print or strike their own emergency currency. Vierzehnheiligen — the famous pilgrimage basilica just outside town — gave the city an obvious subject: the site draws its name from a 15th-century shepherd's vision of fourteen auxiliary saints, and the church built to mark it became one of Balthasar Neumann's last and most ambitious commissions, completed in 1772.

Aluminium was the practical choice for municipal coinage by this point; base metals were cheap and the dies simple to cut.