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25 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Geisa (City of Geisa, Thuringia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 25 Pfennigs (25 Pfennige) (0.25) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Central portrait vignette of Athanasius Kircher — the Jesuit scholar born in Geisa and celebrated as the decoder of hieroglyphs — rendered in intaglio-style line engraving against a warm amber ground, set within a ruled rectangular frame. Flanking the portrait on both sides are two columns of individually gridded, colourfully printed ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, evoking Kircher's Egyptological studies. Denomination numeral "25" occupies the upper corner cartouches in black, while two shield-shaped panels in the lower corners carry the name "ATHANASIUS KIRCHER" at left and the inscription "DER ENTZIFFERER DER HIEROGLYPHEN" at right. |
| Reverse lettering | ATHANASIUS KIRCHER FÜNF·u·ZWANZIG·PFENIG DER·ENTZIFFERER DER·HIEROGLYPHEN (Translation: Athanasius Kircher. Twenty-Five Pfennig. The Decoder of the Hieroglyphs.) |
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| Comments |
Geisa is a small town in the Rhön region of Thuringia, and like hundreds of similarly sized German municipalities in 1921, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — to compensate for a chronic shortage of small-denomination coins. The Reichsbank simply could not keep pace with postwar demand for fractional coinage, and local authorities filled the gap themselves. J. A. Schwarz of Lindenberg im Allgäu was a prolific printer of such notes, supplying dozens of towns across Germany with finished stock at a time when the Notgeld trade had become a minor industry in its own right.
Collectors drove much of the late Notgeld boom; many issues were printed in quantities well beyond local need, bought directly by philatelists and never spent.