50 Pfennig

Nördlingen's municipal administration issued this Notgeld note during the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany in the final year of the war, when hoarding of metal coinage had stripped everyday commerce of workable denominations. The Stadtmagistrat — the city council itself, not a bank — acted as issuer, a common but legally awkward arrangement that multiplied across hundreds of German towns in 1917–1918.

Nördlingen sits inside one of Europe's best-preserved meteorite impact craters, the Ries, and the local stone used in its medieval walls contains suevite — a fact the town has never been shy about. Whether any of that civic pride bled into the note's design is a question the catalog images answer better than this entry can.

The 1919 issues reflect post-Armistice continuation of the shortage, not wartime emergency.