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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Gemeinde Wittdün auf Amrum |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
| Type | Local banknote |
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|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Executed in black with coloured accents on a light speckled ground in a bold Art Nouveau graphic style, the reverse presents a central coastal vignette in which Imperial German black-white-red tricolour flags are planted in the sand before a sailing vessel on the sea and a large stone monument bearing a carved figure. Danish flags appear at the lower left and right corners, alluding to the North Schleswig plebiscite context of March 1920. The denomination '50 PFENNIG' is repeated in decorative letterforms along both vertical borders, and the heading 'KRIEGSNOTGELD DER GEMEINDE WITTDÜN AUF AMRUM' runs across the top, with the patriotic legend 'WITTDÜN STIMMT DEUTSCH' and the plebiscite date '14. MÄRZ 1920' inscribed within the composition. |
| Reverse lettering | KRIEGSNOTGELD DER GEMEINDE WITTDÜN AUF AMRUM 50 PFENNIG WITTDÜN STIMMT DEUTSCH IN EINIGKEIT UND VERTRAUT MIT GOTT AUF BESSERE ZEIT 14. MÄRZ 1920. |
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| Comments |
Wittdün is the only settlement of any size on Amrum, a narrow North Frisian island in the Wadden Sea with a permanent population that barely exceeded a few hundred in 1920. The fact that the municipality issued its own Kleingeldersatz at all speaks to how thoroughly the postwar coin shortage had fractured everyday commerce — even communities this isolated were forced to print their own fractional substitutes when Reichsmünzen simply weren't reaching the periphery.
J. C. König & Ebhardt were a well-regarded Hannover printing house, but the distance between printer and issuer here is striking — the notes would have been ordered, printed on the mainland, and shipped across to an island accessible only by ferry.