50 Pfennig

Stettin's 1917 Notgeld issue belongs to the first wave of municipally authorized emergency currency, printed after the Reichsbank's coin-hoarding crisis stripped small denominations from everyday commerce. The city was a major Baltic port and industrial hub, and the demand for low-value transactional currency was acute — wages had to be paid, tram fares collected, market stalls operated.

Printed locally, these notes bypassed the overwhelmed central printing infrastructure entirely. Wear patterns on surviving examples tend to concentrate along vertical fold lines, consistent with notes folded and carried in wage envelopes rather than wallets.