50 Pfennig

Emden's 1918 Pfennig notes belong to the vast wave of Kommunales Notgeld that flooded Germany as the imperial monetary system buckled under wartime metal shortages. The Magistrat — the city's civic governing body — authorized this issue when small-change coinage had all but vanished from everyday transactions, hoarded or melted down faster than the Reichsbank could replace it.

Carl Schleicher & Schüll of Düren were among the more capable commercial printers handling Notgeld contracts at this period, and the underprint security feature here was a practical gesture toward forgery resistance in an environment where dozens of competing local issues were circulating simultaneously.