50 Pfennig

Stolzenau, a small district on the Weser in Lower Saxony, issued this note during the acute small-change shortage that plagued Germany through the early 1920s — a shortage caused not by the hyperinflation that would come later, but by wartime hoarding of metal coinage that never fully reversed. The Kreisausschuss, the district executive committee, had the legal authority under Notgeld provisions to authorize emergency issues at the county level, which is why notes like this one bear administrative rather than municipal imprints.

August Scherl GmbH was primarily a Berlin publishing house — better known for newspapers and illustrated magazines than for security printing — yet took on considerable Notgeld printing work during this period.