50 Pfennig

Greiz was the former residence of the Reuss principality — one of the more obscure German dynasties, which had the peculiar habit of naming every male heir Heinrich, distinguished only by number. By 1921 the dynasty was gone, the inflation was accelerating, and the city was printing its own emergency money like hundreds of other German municipalities scrambling to cover the chronic small-denomination coin shortage.

Löffler & Co. was a local firm, which kept transport and procurement simple during a period when both were unreliable. The watermark security feature is notably conscientious for a notgeld issue of this type — many comparable municipal notes dispensed with it entirely.