50 Pfennig

Bad Blankenburg was one of hundreds of small German municipalities that began printing their own emergency paper in 1917 as the war consumed metal coinage and the Reichsbank struggled to keep small denominations in circulation. This Notgeld issue from the Stadtgemeinde — the municipal authority, not a bank — was a direct response to that shortage, with Reinecke & Klein in Weimar handling the press run for numerous Thuringian towns during this period.

Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt had itself ceased to exist as a sovereign principality only two years later, absorbed into Thuringia in 1919. The note predates that dissolution by just enough to still carry the old administrative identity in its issuer line.