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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Lehesten (City of Lehesten, Thuringia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Size | 85 × 55 mm |
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|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | 50 PFENNIG NOTGELD der Stadt Lehesten i. Thür. den 11. November 1920 DAS BÜRGERMEISTERAMT Gültig bis 3 Monate nach erfolgtem Aufruf Bismarckturm auf dem Wetzstein, Fernsicht bei 815 m Höhe Ser. III |
| Reverse description | The reverse carries a full-width chromolithographic vignette of a young child seated on a tiled floor beside a large school blackboard framed in wood, pointing with chalk at a four-line verse written in ornate Kurrent script. A small embroidered cushion lies on the floor in front of the board. The background is rendered in a pale geometric lattice pattern, and the overall composition has the character of a sentimental genre illustration typical of early twentieth-century German Notgeld artistic design. |
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| Comments |
Lehesten, a small quarry town in the Thuringian Slate Mountains, issued this Notgeld during the postwar emergency that left municipal and commercial issuers filling the coin shortage left by wartime metal requisitioning. The slate industry defined the town entirely — Lehesten's quarries had supplied roofing slate across Central Europe for centuries, and the community had little economic identity apart from them.
Small-town Thuringian Notgeld from 1920 was produced by a handful of regional printers, often in short runs with no redemption infrastructure beyond local goodwill. Many pieces were never redeemed at all, absorbed instead by the collector market that had already begun treating Notgeld as a collecting category before the inflation crisis even peaked.