50 Pfennig

Wesel's 1921 Notgeld issue belongs to the second wave of municipal emergency money that flooded Germany after the postwar inflation made small Reichsmark coinage effectively disappear from circulation. Cities, towns, and even individual businesses printed their own fractional notes to keep commerce moving — by 1921 there were thousands of distinct local issues, and quality ranged from crude letterpress slips to elaborately engraved collector pieces.

Wesel, a Rhineland garrison town with a long Prussian military history, was also under French and British occupation at the time of issue, a fact that adds an unusual political dimension to even routine municipal finance of this period.