Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Wetzlar (City of Wetzlar) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 50 Pfennigs (50 Pfennige) (0.50) |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Printer | Log in to see details |
| Designer(s) | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse, matching the obverse in its rope-twist border and cream paper with red, dark brown, and yellow printing, presents the word "Fünfzig" in Fraktur at upper left and right, with "Pfennig" correspondingly at lower left and right, and the numeral "50" set within circular guilloche rosettes on the lateral panels. A repeated "50 PFENNIG" underprint fills the background of the side panels. The central vignette, rendered in letterpress, illustrates the literary scene "Werther und die brotschneidende Lotte" from Goethe's novel, with a serial number panel above. |
| Reverse lettering | Fünfzig 50 Pfennig 50 PFENNIG Werther und die brotschneidende Lotte B No |
| Signature(s) | Log in to see details |
| Protection type | Log in to see details |
| Protection description | Log in to see details |
| Variants | Log in to see details |
| Comments |
Wetzlar's 50 Pfennig Notgeld of 1920 belongs to the flood of emergency municipal scrip that German cities, towns, and even individual businesses were forced to produce following the postwar coin shortage — by 1921, tens of thousands of distinct Notgeld types were in circulation across Germany. Wetzlar was a mid-sized industrial and optical-manufacturing center on the Lahn, home to the Leitz works, and its municipal administration issued locally printed scrip rather than waiting on a central supply chain that simply wasn't functioning.
Printed by Scharfes Druckereien in the same city, this note never left the local economy it was designed to serve.