25 Pfennig Dellbrücker Lichtspiele

Dellbrücker Lichtspiele was a cinema in Cologne-Dellbrück that issued this 25 Pfennig note during the acute coin shortage that plagued Germany in the early Weimar years. Notgeld issued by private businesses — shops, cinemas, breweries — was legal and common between 1919 and 1922, filling a gap the Reichsbank simply could not address quickly enough. A cinema issuing its own emergency currency is unusual enough; that the note incorporates a postage stamp as its sole security feature places it firmly in the cheaper, improvised end of the Notgeld spectrum.

The stamp served a practical anti-counterfeiting function — removing or replicating it without destroying the note was difficult enough to deter casual fraud at face value.