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50 Pfennig
| Issuer | Gemeinde Mellenbach (Mellenbach Municipality, Thuringia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1921 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 50 Pfennigs (50 Pfennige) (0.50) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | The reverse is printed in green, blue, and rose on paper with a scalloped decorative border framing the entire design. A central landscape vignette in colour depicts a river valley scene in the Schwarzatal, with a winding watercourse, coniferous and deciduous trees, rocky outcrops at right, and small human figures along the bank, rendered in a fine lithographic style. A purple-tinted panel above the vignette carries the inscription 'Schwarzatal, du meine Heimat, wie bist du so schön.' and a matching panel below bears the place name in Gothic script; the denomination '50' appears in Gothic numerals in green panels at left and right. |
| Reverse lettering | Schwarzatal, du meine Heimat, wie bist du so schön. Mellenbach i. Thür. 50 |
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| Comments |
Mellenbach is a small village in the Schwarzatal valley of Thuringia, and like hundreds of similarly sized German municipalities in 1921, it issued its own emergency paper — Notgeld — to compensate for the chronic small-denomination coin shortage that persisted well after the armistice. The Reichsbank simply could not mint fractional coinage fast enough to keep pace with postwar economic disruption, leaving local governments to fill the gap themselves.
Series longevity for village-level Thuringian Notgeld was typically short; most municipalities recalled and destroyed their issues within months once coin circulation normalized, which is what drives surviving pieces into collector hands today.