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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Schalkau (City of Schalkau) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1918 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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| Obverse description | Green guilloche underprint with an interlocking rosette border frames the entire note, over which the title 'Notgeld der Stadt Schalkau in Thüringen' and the year '1918' are printed in Gothic blackletter at the top. A central oval vignette in red-brown presents the ruins of Schaumburg castle set within a wooded landscape, captioned 'RUINE SCHAUMBURG' along the oval's upper arc, with scalloped medallions bearing '50' and 'Pf.' in bold letterpress flanking it at left and right. Below the vignette, the issuing authority legend 'Das Bürgermeisteramt' appears in Gothic script accompanied by a manuscript signature. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A dense green guilloche underprint in an interlocking wave pattern covers the entire surface, bounded by a dotted border. The municipal coat of arms of Schalkau, printed in green and showing a divided shield with a rampant lion in the upper half and two crossed floral branches in the lower half, is positioned at centre-top, with a serial number in red-violet to its upper right. A four-line pledge text in Gothic script is arranged across the face of the note below the arms. |
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| Comments |
Schalkau is a small town in Thuringia, and this 50 Pfennig note is a product of the acute small-change shortage that gripped Germany from roughly 1916 onward — Reichsbank coin metal had been redirected toward the war effort, and municipalities were left to fill the gap themselves. Cities, towns, market committees, and even individual businesses issued their own Kleingeldersatz notes under loosely administered central guidelines. Schalkau was one of hundreds doing exactly this by 1918.
These municipal issues were technically provisional and were supposed to be withdrawn once normal coinage resumed — which, given what followed in 1919–1923, did not happen cleanly.