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25 Pfennig
| Issuer | Gemeinde Kummerfeld (Municipality of Kummerfeld) |
|---|---|
| Year | |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 88 × 59 mm |
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| Obverse description | Yellow-ochre note with a bold black ruled border enclosing a triptych layout. The central panel carries a line-engraved portrait bust of a bearded, bespectacled gentleman — believed to be the Low German poet Fritz Reuter — set against an unprinted reserve. Denomination numerals '25' appear in the upper-left and lower corners, a serial number is printed in the lower-right panel, and the validity clause with issuing authority attribution occupies the bottom text band. The printer's imprint 'KONRAD HANF HAMBURG 8' runs below the outer frame. |
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| Reverse description | Yellow-ochre note in a matching ruled border, with the central vignette illustrating a humorous domestic scene drawn in a folk-art style: three figures — two women reacting in surprise and a stout man seated with his back to the viewer — are arranged around a wall clock, illustrating an episode from Fritz Reuter's Low German poem 'De Wett'. Corner and side panels carry denomination numerals '25', interlocked-ring ornaments, playing-card suit symbols, and repeated issuer inscriptions in Fraktur lettering. A quoted line from the poem is set in the lower central band. |
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| Comments |
Kummerfeld is a village in Holstein — in the early 1920s, its population was well under a thousand. That a municipality this small was issuing its own emergency currency says more about the collapse of the Reichsbank's distribution infrastructure during the hyperinflation period than about any local financial ambition. Gemeinden across Germany were printing Notgeld simply because there was no other way to make change; coins had vanished from circulation as metal values outpaced face values.
Konrad Hanf was a Hamburg commercial printer, not a specialist banknote firm. Small-denomination Notgeld like this was bread-and-butter work for regional print shops in 1921–1923.