Catalog
5 Pfennige
| Issuer | Magistrat der Kreisstadt Heilsberg |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Stadt Heilsberg. Gut für fünf Pfennige. Gültig bis 1. Januar 1918. Heilsberg, den 2. April 1917. Der Magistrat der Kreisstadt Heilsberg Magistrat Heilsberg |
| Reverse description | The reverse is plain, left blank without any printed design, text, or ornamentation, consistent with the simple emergency currency (Notgeld) production practice of the period. |
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| Comments |
Heilsberg's municipal authorities issued this wartime Notgeld out of necessity — the hoarding of metal coinage during WWI left small transactions impossible across much of provincial Germany, and towns were legally permitted to fill the gap with locally printed paper. Heilsberg, a small administrative center in East Prussia, printed and issued this themselves rather than relying on a commercial printer.
The town passed to Poland under postwar boundary shifts and was renamed Lidzbark Warmiński. Notes like this one predate that transition by decades, issued when the city was solidly within the German imperial east.