50 Pfennig

Berlin's municipal authority issued this note in 1918 under the Notgeld system, which allowed German cities and towns to produce their own emergency small-denomination currency as metal coinage disappeared from circulation — hoarded, melted, or diverted to wartime industrial use. By the final year of the war, the Reichsbank had effectively lost control of the fractional currency supply, and hundreds of municipalities stepped in to fill the gap.

Over twelve million printed for a single city in a single year tells you how acute the coin shortage had become. Berlin's municipal series was purely functional — no collector appeal was intended, unlike the decorative Notgeld that flooded the market from 1919 onward.