50 Pfennig

Schmalkalden is best known among historians as the site of the 1531 Protestant League and Luther's 1537 articles, but this 50 Pfennig Notgeld piece belongs to an altogether more mundane crisis — the acute coin shortage that gripped Germany in the inflationary spiral following the First World War. Kreise across the country were empowered to issue their own emergency small-denomination notes, and Herrschaft Schmalkalden was no exception.

Feodor Wilisch was a local Schmalkalden printer, and the involvement of a named designer, Kurt Jäckel, was not unusual for the better-produced Notgeld issues of 1921 — municipalities often treated these notes as minor civic showcases, commissioning original artwork rather than relying on plain typeset slips.