50 Pfennig

Bielschowitz was a small industrial commune in Upper Silesia, its economy tied closely to coal mining. This note belongs to the vast proliferation of Notgeld issued by German municipalities from 1914 onward as small-denomination coinage disappeared from circulation — hoarded by the public and consumed by wartime metal demands. By 1917 the shortage was acute enough that even minor townships were printing their own emergency fractional currency.

J. C. König & Ebhardt of Hannover were a serious commercial printer, not a jobbing house, and the watermarked paper reflects a higher production standard than much municipal Notgeld of the period.