50 Pfennig

Berga an der Elster is a small town in what was then the Province of Saxony, and like hundreds of similarly sized municipalities, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — during the inflationary chaos following Germany's defeat in 1918. The Otto Henning A.G. press in nearby Greiz handled a considerable volume of regional Notgeld commissions during this period, making them one of the more prolific small-format printers of the Thuringian issues.

The near-square format is characteristic of the early 1920 wave of municipal issues, before later series trended toward more elongated proportions.