See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

50 Pfennig

Issuer Stadt Bitterfeld (City of Bitterfeld)
Year 1921
Type Local banknote
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Size Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Printer Log in to see details
Designer(s) Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Log in to see details
Obverse lettering NOTGELD DER STADT BITTERFELD
50 PF
PFENNIG
DER MAGISTRAT
HAL. TURM ERB. A 1536 ABGEB. 1873
ALT. RATHAUS ERB. ANNO 1606 ABGEB. 1865
EINLOESBAR BEI DER STADTSPAR KASSE BITTERFELD BIS 1 MON. N.D. AUFKUND.
DIESER 5
1921
Reverse description Log in to see details
Reverse lettering BITTERFELD
STAADT BITTERFELD
HALLE BERLIN
LEIPZIG MAGDEBURG
SEHN WIR UNS NICHT IN DIESER WELT,
SO SEHN WIR UNS IN BITTERFELD
50
1830
Berlin
Magdeburg
Signature(s) Log in to see details
Protection type Log in to see details
Protection description Log in to see details
Variants Log in to see details
Comments

Bitterfeld's 1921 Notgeld issue arrived at the peak of Germany's postwar small-change crisis, when municipal and corporate bodies across the Reich were printing their own emergency fractional currency because Reichsbank coin simply wasn't circulating. The city leaned on a local designer — H. Schiebel — rather than one of the major Notgeld printing houses, which was common enough among smaller municipalities trying to cut costs.

Bitterfeld was already a significant industrial chemical center by this date, dominated by the electrochemical and lignite-processing industries that would define the region for the rest of the century. Whether that industrial identity influenced Schiebel's design choices is recorded nowhere I can confirm with certainty.

Collector demand for Bitterfeld Notgeld is modest — the series was neither scarce in issue nor particularly unusual in denomination.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE