50 Pfennig

Rothenburg ob der Tauber issued this Notgeld note in 1918 under the Stadtmagistrat — the civic authority — as small-change coinage effectively vanished from circulation during the war. The Reichsbank had long since absorbed silver and base metal coinage into the war economy, leaving municipalities to paper over the gap with their own emergency issues. Rothenburg's version was among thousands of similar local notes produced across Germany that year, though the town's administrative series remained relatively restrained compared to the elaborate collector-targeted Notgeld that flooded the market from 1920 onward.