50 Pfennig

Eschwege is a small town in Hessen-Nassau, and like hundreds of similarly sized German municipalities, it issued its own emergency paper money — Notgeld — during the acute coin shortage that followed the First World War. The Reichsbank's metal coinage had largely disappeared from circulation by 1917, hoarded or melted, leaving local governments to fill the gap with whatever printing facilities were available to them.

Municipal 50 Pfennig issues from this period were almost universally over-printed in large quantities and survived in high numbers, since most saw little actual use — collectors absorbed them almost immediately.