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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Stadt Zahna (City of Zahna) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1920 |
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| Currency | Mark (1914-1924) |
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| Obverse description | Blue-toned notgeld printed on paper with an overall guilloche underprint pattern and ornate lace-like border. The city arms of Zahna — a shield bearing a castle tower — appears at the top centre, flanked by the bold letterpress inscriptions STADT and ZAHNA. A large central numeral 50 is set within a sunburst medallion, with the word PFENNIG repeated to either side in decorative panels. The lower portion carries two manuscript signature lines above a three-line redemption clause, with the printer's imprint C. ZIEHLKE, LIEBERWERDA at the foot. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | The reverse repeats the same design as the obverse, printed in the same blue-toned ink on a guilloche underprint ground, with the city arms vignette at the top centre, the large numeral 50 in a central sunburst medallion, PFENNIG panels to left and right, and the two signature lines with title designations Bürgermeister and Beigeordneter below. The redemption clause and the printer's imprint C. ZIEHLKE, LIEBERWERDA appear at the foot, and the denomination numeral 50 is repeated in each corner roundel. |
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| Comments |
Zahna is a small town in the Wittenberg district of Saxony-Anhalt, and like hundreds of German municipalities in 1920, it resorted to issuing its own emergency paper — Notgeld — to compensate for the chronic small-change shortage that persisted long after the First World War ended. The Reichsbank simply could not produce subsidiary coinage fast enough to meet demand, and local commerce ground to a halt without it. Curt Ziehlke of Lieberwerda was one of many regional printers who made a modest business of filling that gap.
By 1920 the collectible Notgeld craze was already distorting the market — towns were printing far more than they needed for circulation, selling sets directly to collectors at a premium. Whether Zahna's issue was genuinely utilitarian or partly speculative is worth considering when assessing surviving condition.