Catalog
25 Pfennigs
| Issuer | Gemeindekasse Freienohl (Municipality of Freienohl, Sauerland, Westphalia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 25 Pfennigs (25 Pfennige) (0.25) |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Light green border frame encloses a tripartite composition: on the left, the denomination 25 Pfennig and the place name Freienohl im Sauerland are rendered in large decorative gold Gothic script with small ornamental flourishes; at centre, a rectangular black-line vignette shows a wooded river landscape in the Sauerland style, with a solitary figure standing on a wooden footbridge in the foreground and a dense conifer-clad hillside rising steeply in the background; to the right, a four-line verse in Westphalian dialect is set in gold calligraphy, attributed at the foot to F. W. Grimme. |
| Reverse lettering | 25 Pfennig Freienohl im Sauerland Biärgaff is lichte, Biägopp gäit richte, Dat äine met Jlaifen, Dat andre met Schwäifen F. W. Grimme. |
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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.