50 Pfennig

Stützerbach is a village in the Ilm district of Thuringia, and like hundreds of other small German municipalities in 1921, it issued its own emergency currency — Notgeld — because the Reichsbank simply could not keep low-denomination coinage in circulation fast enough. Rampant hoarding and metal shortages had stripped small change from daily commerce, forcing even tiny communities to print their own scrip.

Adolf Forker of Leipzig was a minor commercial printer who handled Notgeld contracts for numerous Thuringian municipalities during this period, producing workmanlike but unremarkable results. The reference suffix "1a-5/6" suggests this note belongs to a small numbered series variant, likely differentiated by serial range or a minor plate revision.