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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Magistrat der Stadt Jastrow (West Prussia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1917 |
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| Shape | Rectangular |
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| Obverse description | Plain cream-coloured letterpress-printed Notgeld voucher with a simple ruled border forming corner squares, each containing the numeral '50'. A small eagle-surmounted municipal coat of arms vignette is printed in light blue-green at centre, overlaid by the bold denomination text '50 Pfennig'. The issue date 'Jastrow, den 10. Januar 1917' and the issuing authority 'Der Magistrat' appear below, with two manuscript signatures in ink beneath. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse is entirely unprinted, presenting a plain cream paper surface with no text, vignette, or decorative elements of any kind. |
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| Comments |
Jastrow — now Jastrowie in northwestern Poland — was a small Prussian market town whose municipal authority issued this note as part of the vast Notgeld wave that swept German-speaking territories from 1916 onward. The Imperial government's wartime hoarding of metal coinage created acute small-change shortages, leaving municipal bodies, businesses, and even individual firms to plug the gap with locally printed paper. The Magistrat had no special authority to issue currency in any modern sense — these were essentially IOUs backed by civic credibility, not a central bank.
West Prussian municipal Notgeld from 1917 is among the plainer of the series, produced before the decorative "collector Notgeld" boom of 1921–22 made such issues self-consciously artistic.