50 Pfennig

Eberswalde's 1919 Notgeld issue was one of thousands produced by German municipalities scrambling to fill the small-denomination coin vacuum left by wartime metal hoarding and postwar economic paralysis. What sets local issues like this apart from the major city series is the printer: Aug. Arendt was a regional commercial press, not a security printer, working within real constraints of ink, paper stock, and engraving capacity. The designer credit to Karl Wahl is unusually specific for a Kleingeldschein of this type — most small-town issues went uncredited entirely.

Eberswalde, a modest industrial and forestry town northeast of Berlin, had no particular monetary infrastructure of its own. The Magistrat issued on its civic authority alone.