50 Pfennig

Köstritz is a small Saxon town best known — if known at all — for the dark lager brewed there since at least the eighteenth century. Like thousands of German municipalities, it issued its own emergency paper currency during the Weimar-era small-change crisis, when acute coin shortages forced local authorities to print fractional denominations the Reichsbank would not supply. These Gemeinde-issued Kleingeldscheine occupied a legal grey area: tolerated but not formally authorized, redeemable in theory but often quietly worthless once the issuing authority lost interest in honoring them.

Köstritz notgeld is not among the better-documented issues, and survival rates for these minor municipal pieces are uneven.