50 Pfennig

Langenaltheim is a small village in the Altmühl valley of Bavaria, and like hundreds of similarly sized German municipalities in 1917, it issued emergency small-change notes — Notgeld — because the wartime hoarding of metal coinage had left everyday commerce nearly paralyzed. The imperial government had stripped copper and nickel from circulation for munitions, and 5, 10, and 50 Pfennig pieces had effectively vanished from use by mid-war.

J. P. Himmer in Augsburg was a logical choice for Bavarian municipal authorities — a well-established regional printer capable of producing modest but legitimate-looking scrip quickly and cheaply. The official seal substituted for the security infrastructure that a proper issuing bank would have brought to the job.