50 Pfennig

Düren's 1917 Notgeld emission belongs to the first wave of municipal emergency currency that swept German cities after the Reichsbank's coin hoarding ordinances of 1916 effectively stripped small denominations from daily commerce. The Stadt Düren, like dozens of Rhenish municipalities, moved quickly to fill the gap rather than wait for central authorization that was slow and inconsistently applied.

The underprint security feature is modest by later Notgeld standards — by 1921, German municipal issues had become elaborately printed collector pieces. The 1917 issues were purely functional, printed under wartime paper restrictions, which is why paper quality on surviving examples is often brittle or browned.