50 Pfennig

Aschersleben's municipal notgeld program was a direct response to the postwar coin shortage that paralyzed small transactions across Germany from 1918 onward. By 1920 the Reichsbank had still not restored adequate fractional coinage, forcing hundreds of Städte and Gemeinden to print their own emergency issues. Aschersleben, a mid-sized Saxony-Anhalt town with a salt-mining and industrial base, produced this 50 Pfennig piece through its Magistrat rather than a private savings institution — a distinction that made redemption legally binding on the municipality.

The DeNG reference places this in the first documented series for the issuer, suggesting earlier 1920 production before the inflationary spiral made such fixed-denomination notes economically obsolete within months.