50 Pfennig

Rieder is a small village in the Harz foothills of Saxony-Anhalt, and like hundreds of similarly minor German municipalities in 1921, it issued its own emergency money — Notgeld — to cover the chronic shortage of small-denomination coin that had been deteriorating since the war years. The Reichsbank simply could not keep pace with demand, and local authorities filled the gap themselves.

The watermarked paper distinguishes this particular note from the cheaper wood-pulp issues flooding the market at the same moment. Whether that was a deliberate signal of civic seriousness or simply the paper stock available to the printer is not recorded.