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25 Pfennigs
| Issuer | Gemeindekasse Freienohl (Municipality of Freienohl, Sauerland, Westphalia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Cream paper with a light green border frame on all sides. The upper portion bears the large Gothic-script legend NOTGELDSCHEIN in two-tone gold and black calligraphy, below which the place name FREIENOHL appears in a larger hand, flanked by the inscriptions der Freiheit and im Sauerland. The central text block, rendered in Kurrent-style calligraphy in black and gold, states the redemption obligation of the Gemeindekasse Freienohl, interrupted at centre by a circular municipal seal in gold bearing the letter S surrounded by the legend GEMEINDE SIGILLUM. At the foot appear the printed designations Der Amtmann and Der Gemeindevorsteher with two manuscript signatures and a hand-stamped serial number. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | NOTGELDSCHEIN der Freiheit Freienohls im Sauerland Die Gemeindekasse Freienohl zahlt dem Einlieferer den Wert dieses Scheines bis einen Monat nach erfolgter Ausrufung Der Amtmann — Der Gemeindevorsteher |
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| Comments |
Freienohl is a small village on the Ruhr river in the Sauerland, and like hundreds of similarly obscure German municipalities it resorted to printing its own emergency currency during the Kleingeldnot — the small-change famine — of the early 1920s. Federal coinage had effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded against rampant inflation, and local Gemeindekassen stepped in to fill the gap with Notgeld issues that were technically obligations of the municipal treasury.
The Gemeindekasse, not a bank, is listed as issuer — meaning redemption depended entirely on the financial health of a village administration with no formal monetary authority. Most of these issues were redeemed before hyperinflation made them worthless anyway, which is why surviving uncirculated examples are more common than genuinely circulated ones.