50 Pfennig

Frankenhausen's 1921 Notgeld issue is one of several hundred German municipal emergency notes from the inflationary period, but this 50 Pfennig piece stands apart for its attribution to Walter Hegelmann, a designer who produced work for multiple Thuringian Notgeld series and brought a consistency of craft unusual for what were, in many towns, hastily commissioned stopgaps. Richters und Co. in Erfurt handled a significant volume of regional Notgeld printing, and the Frankenhausen commission fits a pattern of small Thuringian municipalities consolidating print orders locally rather than approaching the larger Leipzig or Berlin houses.

Frankenhausen itself is better known to historians for the 1525 Battle of Frankenhausen — the decisive defeat of the peasant armies under Thomas Müntzer — than for its monetary history.