50 Pfennig

Gräfenthal is a small town in the Thuringian slate-mining district, and its 1921 Notgeld issue belongs to the vast flood of municipal emergency money that German local authorities printed following the post-WWI collapse of small-denomination Reichsmünzen from circulation. The Reichsbank's inability to supply adequate coinage — partly due to metal hoarding, partly wartime depletion — forced thousands of German municipalities to issue their own fractional paper.

Thuringian Notgeld from this period was often regionally themed and printed in short runs, making individual town issues disproportionately scarce relative to the larger city series. Gräfenthal's issue was valid only locally and would have been redeemable in theory, though many were never returned — retained by collectors even at the time of issue, a practice the municipalities quietly encouraged to reduce redemption costs.